Wet And Wild Quotes

I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

It was wild. Abandoned. Rough. Wet. Intense. Fiery. Thorough. Exquisite. Heart-pounding. Blood-singing. Soul-rocking. Life-altering. Luscious.

Love is not a hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!

What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?

So, you invite a wild rabbit living in Italy to a party on the island of Crete. What’s it supposed to do, swim there? Its little tux would get wet.

I said You don't know what worry is. I don't know what it is. I don't know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not . I don't know whether I can cry or not. I don't know whether I have tried to or not. I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also. You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore’s glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover’s fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling’s cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly. Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.

November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.

Love is the story and the prayer that matters the most.

Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine Burned like the ruby fire set In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

When he'd pushed inside me and I'd feel him begin to penetrate, it had turned me into a wild thing-hot, wet, and desperate for more of him. With every kiss, every caress, every thrust, I'd just needed more. He'd touched me, I went nuts. The world dwindled down to one thing: him.

His eyes are wet and wide in that orange glow of night-road, that perfect combination of street lamp and moonlight that casts a terrific sadness, or wildness, on any space in its spell.

"What you got to give, Faye, here," his hips pressed into mine, "clean, pure, all fuckin' mine and that's beautiful right there. But the rest, how wet you get, how tight you are, you goin' wild for me like you did just now, baby. Fuck. You gotta know, coupled with the other, that's beauty that's off the charts." Hmm. I liked that. A frak of a lot.

I want to watch you come,” he whispers, eyes moving across my face. He pulls his thumb back and paints a wet line across my lower lip. “I want to feel you squeezing me and I want to eat your greedy little noises.

I had a dog who loved flowers. Briskly she went through the fields, yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her dark head and her wet nose touching the face of every one with its petals of silk with its fragrance rising into the air where the bees, their bodies heavy with pollen hovered - and easily she adored every blossom not in the serious careful way that we choose this blossom or that blossom the way we praise or don't praise - the way we love or don't love - but the way we long to be - that happy in the heaven of earth - that wild, that loving.

Then his gaze shifted to the wild bush sprouting from her head. “Wow. Did I do that to your hair?” He looked oddly pleased at the thought. Rylann made a mental note to throw a flat iron in her purse the next time she had sex in the shower with a billionaire ex-con. Not that there was going to be a next time. “Not all of us are lucky enough to have freakishly perfect, shampoo-commercial hair. This is what happens when I get wet.” His expression turned wicked. “I know exactly what happens when you get wet, counselor.” Yep, she’d walked right into that one.

All stories are, in some form, prayers.

and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.

In Vienna there are shadows. The city is black and everything is done by rote. I want to be alone. I want to go to the Bohemian Forest. May, June, July, August, September, October. I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. I want to gaze with astonishment at moldy garden fences, I want to experience them all, to hear young birch plantations and trembling leaves, to see light and sun, enjoy wet, green-blue valleys in the evening, sense goldfish glinting, see white clouds building up in the sky, to speak to flowers. I want to look intently at grasses and pink people, old venerable churches, to know what little cathedrals say, to run without stopping along curving meadowy slopes across vast plains, kiss the earth and smell soft warm marshland flowers. And then I shall shape things so beautifully: fields of colour…

imagine the desert mothers, with hair tangled tighter than their theology and breasts that flowed milk and mystic wisdom. they knew how to draw the singing sigils in the sand, how to dig rough and bitten fingers into desiccated dirt for water to wet the lips of their young. women of hips and heft, who learned how to burn beneath the wild and searing sun, who made loud love against the star-flecked threat of night, who knew that strength is not always a matter of muscle. imagine your ancestresses, the prophetesses of the arid lands, before these starched traditions and pews too hard to pray from, who bled true ritual and birthed their own fierce souls at creation's crowning --

At that time, I well remember whatever could excite - certain accidents of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and creeping outside the basement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was wild, it was pitch dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to man - too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced by white and blinding bolts.

A Blessing Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241)

The early dew-falls that did a pristine coating, over the woods with its finest transparency, glazed as like its wet white-glassy earrings that hung on the ears of wild flowers—unlatched my fancy.

But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him. The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind. Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.

Men are the scourge of the universe. I say we line them all up along the highway and then mow them down with big trucks. No, wait! Steamrollers! Yeah, let’s steamroll them all until they’re nothing more than slimy wet spots on the road! (Chrissy)

I had a dog who loved flowers. Briskly she went through the fields, yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her dark head and her wet nose touching the face of every one with its petals of silk, with its fragrance rising into the air where the bees, their bodies heavy with pollen, hovered— and easily she adored every blossom, not in the serious, careful way that we choose this blossom or that blossom— the way we praise or don’t praise— the way we love or don’t love— but the way we long to be— that happy in the heaven of earth— that wild, that loving.

When you unchain it from its anchor, embrace it and kiss it goodbye, you finally find yourself wandering in a water cave made of safety, made of understanding till you finally emerge in the alcove of your soul. The light of it shines like sunlight on your face wet with tears. This is where you are safe. This is where you recover. This is how you bathe in the glow of your own healing.

This time, there's nothing gentle about our kiss. It's all passion and wet kisses and curious hands.

Wishing to make an effective entrance, he flung it wide open, when a heavy jug of water fell right down on him, wetting him to the skin, and just missing his left shoulder by a couple of inches. At the same moment he heard stifled shrieks of laughter proceeding from the four-post bed.

In the last fifteen minutes, she’d knocked him flat on his back, reduced him to speechlessness, and for the first time in his life, made him wonder if lightning strikes from fate weren’t metaphysical bullshit.

Hoe kan het een wet zijn dat je, als je iemand kwijtraakt, ook meteen jezelf kwijtraakt? -Ik wil niet mee, ik wil niet mee! Nu weet ik: geen verzet. Het is zoals wanneer je wordt gepakt door een wild dier of door de stroming: hou je van de domme. Wees geen held.

Some people dance with singing rain; some people get wet with misery and pain.

I need to be more in the moment, like when I was wet and wild in the waves. Being in the moment—right now!—equals freedom. It can't be scrutinized, analyzed, rhapsodized, mythologized. It can't be desecrated, debated, prognosticated. Right now can only be lived. Isn't this the same message I tried to get across to the kiddies in the lecture that got me fired? Isn't this the same advice Gladdie gave me right before she died? Why is it that the most fundamental life lesson—LIVE!—is the one I continually forget to put into practice?

As time went by, I realized that the particular place I'd chose was less important than the fact that I'd chosen a place and focused my life around it. Although the island has taken on great significance for me, it's no more inherently beautiful or meaningful than any other place on earth. What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it's flat or rugged, rich or austere. wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received.

Must she eat like a dog? My cheeks redden, but I make no moves to conceal this, and in a wild moment of abandonment – something I have never known before – I think, I would be the microbes in the beef that her body seeks and destroys if it meant she would be paying me even the slightest bit of attention. The warmth and the wet of her mouth. What a thought to think! How suddenly and vehemently I think it. And how hot my cheeks are. It makes perfect sense to want to be inside her mouth, to be torn to pieces by her; until I catch myself wanting it, and I am shocked, I am disgusted. I almost laugh at my own absurdity.

At what point in our lives does cynicism take over from instinct? When we stop feeling the softness of rain on our face and start worrying about being wet?…When do we make that switch from being part of the natural world to being an observer with an assumed right to control it?

HEAR and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild—as wild as wild could be—and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.

I'm a fool, the new day rises on the world and on my foolish life: I'm a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, the wetness on the wire fence bugled me to belief, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul, I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss - I am made of Cody, too -

All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. (Quoted from Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping, 1923)

All he had loved, and moulded into thought, From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, Lamented Adonais. Morning sought Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day; Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

Water fell from the sky and dripped from the branches, streaming down the gully of the trail. I walked beneath the enormous trees, the forest canopy high above me, the bushes and low-growing plants that edged the trail soaking me as I brushed past. Wet and miserable as it was, the forest was magical—Gothic in its green grandiosity, both luminous and dark, so lavish in its fecundity that it looked surreal, as if I were walking through a fairy tale rather than the actual world.

Prendergast’s ribs spread open with a wet crack.

Fucking him gives me life, but fucking her … feels like I’ve died and gone to heaven. “She’s so fucking wet,

Would you like to hear a very bald, very earthy, completely scientific truth?” He struggled up on his elbow, reaching one hand toward her face. He cupped her cheek in his hand, traced her parted lips with his thumb. “You,” he whispered hoarsely, “have the most goddamned erotic mouth I’ve ever seen. These sweet, plump lips drive me wild. It’s impossible to look at you and not . . . not wonder, how it would be.” Her eyes went wide. “You’ve wondered.” He nodded. “Oh yes.” “Y-you’ve actually spent time—” “Hours, probably, if you added it up.” “Thinking about—” “This.” He slid his thumb between her startled lips, pressing it deep into her hot, wet mouth. “Yes.

I didn’t wake from these dreams crying. I woke shrieking. Paul grabbed me and held me until I was quiet. He wetted a washcloth with cool water and put it over my face. But those wet washcloths couldn’t wash the dreams of my mother away. Nothing did. Nothing would. Nothing could ever bring my mother back or make it okay that she was gone. Nothing would put me beside her the moment she died. It broke me up. It cut me off. It tumbled me end over end.

What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside? If you will listen I will tell you a story-one whose ghost cannot be banished by the comfort of a roaring fire, I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as your handprint in the snow. I will tell you how we unlocked the Pandora's box of ourselves, tasted freedom, stained our souls with blood and choice, and unleashed a horror on the world that destroyed its dearest Order. These pages are a confession of all that has led to this cold, gray dawn. What will be now, I cannot say. Is your heart beating faster? Do the clouds seem to be gathering on the horizons? Does the skin on your neck feel stretched tight, waiting for a kiss you both fear and need? Will you be scared? Will you know the truth? Mary Dowd, April 7, 1871

Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and color are always, wild!

It’s No-Touch Tuesday, Martin,” I breathed, reaching for his wrist. His hand stilled, and his face fell to my neck. “Fine. No-Touch Tuesday. But then tomorrow is going to be Wet-and-Wild Wednesday, and the next day will be Tongue-and-Teeth Thursday, and Friday…” He bit me, his teeth sharp—why were his teeth so sharp?!—then licked the spot. “Well, I think you can guess what’s going to happen on Friday.

He ran his fingers over the moist ends of her hair and across her face. Her eyes were wet. Jesus Christ. How many nights had he heard Lily crying. As some parents sleep through fire, thunderstorms, and voices at the back door only to wake at a child’s whisper, so Everett heard Lily crying at night. Her muffled sobs seemed to have broken his dreams for years. He had heard her even at Fort Lewis, even in Georgia, finally at Bliss. That was Lily crying in the wings whenever the priest came to tear up his mother’s grave. Lily cried in the twilight field where he picked wild poppies with Martha; Lily’s was the cry he heard those nights the kiln burned, the levee broke, the ranch went to nothing.

Seasons didn't come behind the nicotine-stained walls of Mountain City's prison, so Harm always imagined it spring--the locust trees clustered with shaggy white blooms, the wet woods flecked with bloodroot, and wild roses and honeysuckle flashing white among the chestnuts on the mountainsides...

Her beauty must have been exhausting and not to mention troublesome. Glitter swiftly made it's way into the vibrant strands that graced her lavish eyelashes. Each blink, each pressing moment, time seemed to have stopped and I felt as if, her charm could fill an entire room and with every set of eyes locked onto her, somehow the glare of her shimmering wet lipgloss could take care of everyones problems. That as soon as her heavenly music flowed through their wine glasses, that they too were apart of something such bigger, much grander. I believed, when I stood beside her; I became more handsome.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

He would like to burrow under the earth like a bulb, like a root, to where it is still warm. To hibernate with his thoughts and feelings. To remain silent with a shrivelling mouth. He wishes that all the statements, insults, promises he has uttered would become invalid, forgotten by everyone and he himself forgotten too. But no sooner is he secured in the silence, no sooner does he fancy that he has wrapped himself up like a chrysalis, than he is no longer right. A wet, cold wind blows his absence of expectations around the corner, over a flower-stall filled with evergreens and flowers for the dead. And suddenly he is holding in his hands the snowdrops that he didn't want to buy--he who wanted to go empty-handed! The bells of the snowdrops begin to ring wildly and soundlessly, and he goes to where his ruin awaits him. Filled with expectation as never before, with the expectation and the desire for salvation accumulated through all the years.

Then the Man threw his two boots and his little stone axe (that makes three) at the Cat, and the Cat ran out of the Cave and the Dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree. But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.

My vagina was green water, soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw. There is something between my legs. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since. My vagina was chatty, can't wait, so much, so much saying, words talking, can't quit trying, can't quit saying, oh yes, oh yes. Not since I dream there's a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And the bad dead animal smell cannot be removed. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses. My vagina singing all girl songs, all goat bells ringing songs, all wild autumn field songs, vagina songs, vagina home songs. Not since the soldiers put a long thick rifle inside me. So cold, the steel rod canceling my heart. Don't know whether they're going to fire it or shove it through my spinning brain. Six of them, monstrous doctors with black masks shoving bottles up me too. There were sticks, and the end of a broom. My vagina swimming river water, clean spilling water over sun-baked stones over stone clit, clit stones over and over. Not since I heard the skin tear and made lemon screeching sounds, not since a piece of my vagina came off in my hand, a part of the lip, now one side of the lip is completely gone. My vagina. A live wet water village. My vagina my hometown. Not since they took turns for seven days smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me. I became a river of poison and pus and all the crops died, and the fish. My vagina a live wet water village. They invaded it. Butchered it and burned it down. I do not touch now. Do not visit. I live someplace else now. I don't know where that is.

Inversnaid This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

The child's heart beat: but she was growing in the wrong place inside her extraordinary mother, south of safe...she and her mother were rushed to the hospital, where her mother was operated on by a brisk cheerful diminutive surgeon who told me after the surgery that my wife had been perhaps an hour from death from the pressure of the child growing outside the womb, the mother from the child growing, and the child from growing awry; and so my wife did not die, but our mysterious child did...Not uncommon, an ectopic pregnancy, said the surgeon...Sometimes, continued the surgeon, sometimes people who lose children before they are born continue to imagine the child who has died, and talk about her or him, it's such an utterly human thing to do, it helps deal with the pain, it's healthy within reason, and yes, people say to their other children that they actually do, in a sense, have a sister or brother, or did have a sister or brother, and she or he is elsewhere, has gone ahead, whatever the language of your belief or faith tradition. You could do that. People do that, yes. I have patients who do that, yes... One summer morning, as I wandered by a river, I remembered an Irish word I learned long ago, and now whenever I think of the daughter I have to wait to meet, I find that word in my mouth: dunnog, little dark one, the shyest and quietest and tiniest of sparrows, the one you never see but sometimes you sense, a flash in the corner of your eye, a sweet sharp note already fading by the time it catches your ear.

I didn’t want to stop him, but . . . I bit my bottom lip, feeling his fingers slide up and down my pussy, dipping and bringing out the wetness, spreading it over my clit. And then whimpered, feeling two long fingers plunge inside of me. “Shit,” I moaned, squirming against his fingers. “Please stop,” I pleaded. “Tyler, please.” But he just added another finger, staring down and watching the pleasure of what he was doing spread across my face. “Say it again,” he ordered. I blinked, opening my eyes, even though his thumb rubbing circles on my clit was driving me wild. “Tyler,” I said gently. “Please stop.” His mouth curled into a smile, and he stole a kiss, nipping at my bottom lip. “You

I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew—two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, 'I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning,' then they put his thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, 'I will recant.' Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would have said: 'Stop; I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves; but stop.' But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich. Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the truth. Heroism did not excite the respect of our fathers. The man who would not recant was not forgiven. They screwed the thumbscrews down to the last pang, and then threw their victim into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence and darkness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled damned. This was done in the name of love—in the name of mercy, in the name of Christ. I saw, too, what they called the Collar of Torture. Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles. This argument was fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he could not walk, nor sit down, nor stir without the neck being punctured, by these points. In a little while the throat would begin to swell, and suffocation would end the agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his cheeks, 'I do not believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of the children of men.' I saw another instrument, called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and the strain upon the muscles produced such agony that insanity would in pity end his pain. I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of a wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, and ratchets to prevent slipping; over each windlass went chains; some were fastened to the ankles of the sufferer; others to his wrists. And then priests, clergymen, divines, saints, began turning these windlasses, and kept turning, until the ankles, the knees, the hips, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists of the victim were all dislocated, and the sufferer was wet with the sweat of agony. And they had standing by a physician to feel his pulse. What for? To save his life? Yes. In mercy? No; simply that they might rack him once again. This was done, remember, in the name of civilization; in the name of law and order; in the name of mercy; in the name of religion; in the name of Christ.

Wildness and wet . . . let them be left . . . ’ ” “ ‘Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet

Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind.

Are you hard?" "Are you wet?" I volley back.

I still remembered the heat of his tongue and soft-wet press of his mouth. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’d relived it so often, I’d fabricated every glorious detail.

While he’d always liked dancing at the edge of his inner Dom, he’d never fully pulled on the boots and let himself stomp to the primal beat of that commanding force—until tonight.

It was wild. Abandoned. Rough. Wet. Intense. Fiery. Thorough. Exquisite. Heart-pounding. Blood-singing. Soul-rocking. Life-altering. Luscious.

Wildness and wet . . . let them be left . . . ’ ” “ ‘Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.’ 

I’m gonna verbally wreck you…eat you out with my words and then, baby, you’re going to show me how wet I’ve made you, and just how much you liked it.

Peter and I danced in bare feet in the cold wet undergrowth while the moon poured its wild old silver down on us and the water ran black and ancient and the moss shone.

The need to see her—to be with her—is tearing me apart from the inside out. I feel like my soul is on fire without her here.

Volmaakt vrij zijn, en te zelfder tijd volkomen in de ban zijn van de wet, dat is de eeuwige paradox van het menselijk leven, zoals wij die iedere moment in praktijk brengen (...)

She hugs me tight, wetness from her eyes prickling my skin, but I’m not fazed. I can handle it. I can take her anger, her fear, her sadness. I can take it all because that’s what people do when they love each other. They don’t tell them to stop or to think of something better. They hold them for as long as they need it. They’re there for each other. As it should be.

Everything went black in the shocking folds of his embrace. She was very startled and near to sobbing. 'Caw, caw,' echoed his raincoat. 'Don't be frightened,' he said. 'It is only poor Finn, who will do you no harm.' She recovered herself a little, though she was still trembling. She could see her own face reflected in little in the black pupils of his subaqueous eyes. She still looked the same. She saluted herself. He was only a little taller than she and their eyes were almost level. Remotely, she wished him three inches taller. Or four. She felt the warm breath from his wild beast's mouth softly, against her cheek. She did not move. Stiff, wooden, and unresponsive, she stood in his arms and watched herself in his eyes. It was a comfort to see herself as she thought she looked. 'Oh, get it over with, get it over with,' she urged furiously under her breath. He was grinning like Pan in a wood. He kissed her, closing his eyes so that she could not see herself any more. His lips were wet and rough, cracked. It might have been anybody, kissing her, and besides, she did not know him well, if at all. She wondered why he was doing this, putting his mouth on her own undesiring one, softly moving his body against her. What was the need? She felt a long way away from him, and superior, also.

Just think about it. As midwives, we meet wildly interesting people and stay up all night with them. We ask them questions about their sex lives, eat their food, feel inside their bodies, snoop around their houses, drink champagne at all hours, and best of all, we get to catch delicious little naked, wet babies. What I can’t figure out is, why doesn’t everyone want to be a midwife?

a wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill, hysterical lips

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. Gerard Manley Hopkins Inversnaid

He prayed: Almighty God, if it aint too far out of the way of things in your eternal plan do you reckon we could have a little rain down here. Pray it up, some called, and kneeling he cried out among the thunder and the wind: Lord we are dried to jerky down here. Just a few drops for some old boys out here on the prairie and a long ways from home. Amen, they said, and catching up their mounts they rode on. Within the hour the wind cooled and drops of rain the size of grapeshot fell upon them out of that wild darkness. They could smell wet stone and the sweet smell of the wet horses and wet leather. They rode on.

He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother’s uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.

THE FORTRESS Under the pink quilted covers I hold the pulse that counts your blood. I think the woods outdoors are half asleep, left over from summer like a stack of books after a flood, left over like those promises I never keep. On the right, the scrub pine tree waits like a fruit store holding up bunches of tufted broccoli. We watch the wind from our square bed. I press down my index finger -- half in jest, half in dread -- on the brown mole under your left eye, inherited from my right cheek: a spot of danger where a bewitched worm ate its way through our soul in search of beauty. My child, since July the leaves have been fed secretly from a pool of beet-red dye. And sometimes they are battle green with trunks as wet as hunters' boots, smacked hard by the wind, clean as oilskins. No, the wind's not off the ocean. Yes, it cried in your room like a wolf and your pony tail hurt you. That was a long time ago. The wind rolled the tide like a dying woman. She wouldn't sleep, she rolled there all night, grunting and sighing. Darling, life is not in my hands; life with its terrible changes will take you, bombs or glands, your own child at your breast, your own house on your own land. Outside the bittersweet turns orange. Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat branches, finding orange nipples on the gray wire strands. We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples. Your feet thump-thump against my back and you whisper to yourself. Child, what are you wishing? What pact are you making? What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark can I fill for you when the world goes wild? The woods are underwater, their weeds are shaking in the tide; birches like zebra fish flash by in a pack. Child, I cannot promise that you will get your wish. I cannot promise very much. I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch. A pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled through the mulch by his thick white collar. He's on show like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed, one time, from an old lady's hat. We laugh and we touch. I promise you love. Time will not take away that.

Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.

Rothbury stood over her. He was shirtless, wet, wild-haired. Handsome as sin and angry as Lucifer. A duke accustomed to having his way. Now she’d not only defied him, she’d directly challenged him. His words were low and even, but they smoldered like a fuse burning toward gunpowder. “I don’t need to prove anything to you.” He propped his hands on his hips. One of his pectoral muscles twitched angrily. As if registering an indignant harrumph.

Banishment in paradise. It sounded like a brooding emo fan fiction website, but with a few choice expletives thrown in, the words perfectly matched the title Kell slapped on the assignment when they got here a day and a half ago.

Perhaps I could climb aboard a ship and sail to the farthest corner of the world, where there was only undiscovered wilderness, where I could breathe deep the wet wilds and be so lost in fresh green there was no thought of old red.

Joe and Carter and Kelly were coming out of the woods, finishing up their run as I came back from the garden. They were laughing and shoving each other the way brothers do. I loved all three of them. Except. Except. Joe wore a pair of low-slung shorts. Just the smallest things. And that was it. He was almost as big as I was now. We were eye level, or so close that it didn’t matter, which put him a couple of inches over six feet. There was a sheen of sweat over his torso. A spattering of wet blond hairs curling on his chest that looked to be cut out of granite. The soft definition of muscles on his stomach. A line of sweat that hit his happy trail and soaked into the waistband of his shorts. He turned, saying something back to Carter, and I saw the dimples above his ass. The way his legs flexed and shifted as he hopped from one foot to the other. He pointed wildly at something back in the woods and there was a blue vein that stuck out along his bicep and I wanted to trace with my fingers because when had that happened? And those hands. Those big fucking hands and I— Joe had grown up. And somehow, I hadn’t really seen it until it was on full display. Right in front of me. He

When she saw the wild gleam in his eye, her body thrummed in response and she understood why. He wanted the chase. She wanted to be pursued. “So I have to ignore you, you see,” he continued in that low, devastating tone of aristocratic command. “If I were to look at you, I would want to strip you naked. If we conversed, I would need to hear you sigh and moan. That’s not proper drawing room behavior.” He had her backed up against a wall now. Which was a fortunate thing, because her legs had gone weak. “In fact, if I let myself come anywhere near you”—he caught her wrists and lifted them, pinning her arms to the wall—“I’d have your skirts tossed up to your ears and my cock buried inside you before the rest of them looked up from their tea.” Excitement pulsed through her veins. He had her at his mercy, but she didn’t feel the slightest whisper of fear. “And that,” he said, staring hard at her mouth, “would be very bad manners.” “Well . . .” Charlotte wet her lips, daring to look up at him. “I’ve never been too concerned with etiquette.

I said You don't know what worry is. I don't know what it is. I don't know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not. I don't know whether I can cry or not. I don't know whether I have tried to or not. I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

The cherry trees are disconsolate lovers; they can't hold their pink smiles after the unkindness of that night. The wind here is straight from Chicago - it will snap you unless you bend. The news from far-off money towns is the clamor of falling towers. Yet my woolly dog is happy chasing a well-chewed stick and a wet spaniel, a green-headed duck is talking quarks with a brown-headed duck on the lake shore, and my friend is reading poems of spring in a language she knows only in dreams. The wild cherries will bloom again.

true hunter recognizes that experiences are the ultimate hunting trophies; he takes pride in walking the ancient and noble pathway that was laid down by his forebearers; and even when he returns from a hunt cold, wet, and empty-handed, he does so with a full heart.

A gust of wind struck upon the nape of Jukes' neck and next moment he felt it streaming about his wet ankles. The stokehold ventilators hummed: in front of the six fire-doors two wild figures, stripped to the waist, staggered and stooped, wrestling with two shovels.

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there.  It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures.  I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day.  At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.  Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I

He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother's uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead. In four days' riding he crossed the Pecos at Iraan Texas and rode up out of the river breaks where the pumpjacks in the Yates Field ranged against the skyline rose and dipped like mechanical birds. Like great primitive birds welded up out of iron by hearsay in a land perhaps where such birds once had been…..The desert he rode was red and red the dust he raised, the small dust that powdered the legs of the horse he rode, the horse he led. In the evening a wind came up and reddened all the sky before him. There were few cattle in that country because it was barren country indeed yet he came at evening upon a solitary bull rolling in the dust against the bloodred sunset like an animal in sacrificial torment. The bloodred dust blew down out of the sun. He touched the horse with his heels and rode on. He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west across the evening land and the small desert birds flew chittering among the dry bracken and horse and rider and horse passed on and their long shadows passed in tandem like the shadow of a single being. Passed and paled into the darkening land, the world to come.

Lora…” Her name was a tormented whisper as he kissed her harder, fiercer than before, as if he was starving for the taste of her mouth. She twisted in his arms, not trying to get away but to work her arms free… She managed to push them up through his crushing hold and lock them around his neck. He groaned deep in his throat, and she groaned too in protest as his mouth suddenly left hers. He was looking down at her, his breathing heavy, a wild glitter in his eyes. Lora lifted one hand from the corded nape of his neck and lightly stroked the rough, wet edges of his hair.

What’s the towel for?” she asked after a second. “In case you wanted to get your hair wet,” I said. Cam tilted her head in question. “Your hair . . . you don’t like it when it’s straight.” I shrugged. “I know you’ll say it’ll be frizzy or whatever, but the extra water and towel are there—if you want them.

I didn’t wake from these dreams crying. I woke shrieking. Paul grabbed me and held me until I was quiet. He wetted a washcloth with cool water and put it over my face. But those wet washcloths couldn’t wash the dreams of my mother away. Nothing did. Nothing would. Nothing could ever bring my mother back or make it okay that she was gone. Nothing would put me beside her the moment she died. It broke me up. It cut me off. It tumbled me end over end. It took me years to take my place among the ten thousand things again. To be the woman my mother raised. To remember how she said honey and picture her particular gaze. I would suffer. I would suffer. I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods. It took me four years, seven months, and three days to do it. I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. It was a place called the Bridge of the Gods.

The thing she put you in mind of was a paper kite, with thin light struts and a flutter ribbon of nerves that spun wild in the smallest breeze. She was not built for big wind, and soon enough the buffeting of life on the western edge of a wet nowhere loosened the struts and undid the glue that kept all in place.

It is most likely to be found in a similar woodland landscape, green and wet with plenty of oak groves to drink in the small magics of the common fae and create spaces for such portals to manifest---if indeed their existence is the result of mere accident or chance. These sorts of rabbit hole doors---back entrances, if you like---are often said to be accidental, in the stories. Northern Europe is the most likely location; perhaps one of the warmer forests of Russia." He stood unmoving with his hand on the door, staring at me. "Yes, I know that's a lot of conjecture," I said, misreading the look on his face. "I've not had time to give it much thought." He smiled at me, his eyes shining a little too brightly in the way they sometimes did. "We are going to make a very good team, Em." I snorted to cover the heat rising in my face. "So far, our teamwork seems rather unevenly distributed." "I may be of use to you yet, my dear dragon.

No silver seagrass or salt pans, no soldier crabs or sea tides to read, no seaweed necklaces to wear, and no skies filled with ghostly wisps of virga, warning of storms out at sea. On either side of the flat highway the land was thirsty, dry as a cracked tongue. Somehow, though, the strange landscape teemed with life. It hummed in Alice's ears, the clicking buzz of cicadas, the occasional wild cackle of kookaburras. There was the occasional blur of color where wildflowers grew at the base of gum trees. Some had trunks as white as fairytale snow while others we're an ochre color, as glossy as if covered in a slick of wet paint.

Her hands were splayed against the wet tile, her body pulsing. Water rained over them, hot and needle sharp, as he felt the orgasm tear through her. A kind of purging, he thought. She was still gasping when he spun her around and closed his mouth greedily over her breast. She was helpless against what he brought to her. Each time, every time, helpless, staggered. And grateful. She dived her fingers into his hair, twisting, tangling them in that thick wet silk while those good, strong tugs of desire in her belly followed the restless hunger of his mouth on her. His hands, slick, skilled, strong, raced over her, took her to the edge and over. Where he wanted her, where he needed her — shuddering, moaning his name, swamped in her own pleasure. The nails biting viciously into his back thrilled him, the frenzied race of her heart against his incited him. More. All. Now, was all he could think as they savaged each other’s mouths. “I want you.” His breath was heaving as he gripped her hips. “Always. Ever. Mine.” His eyes were a wild and burning blue. She could see nothing else. It should have been too much, this desperate, endless need for him. Yet somehow it was never, never enough. “Mine.” She dragged his mouth back to hers, and when he drove into her, met him beat for urgent beat.

Your desire to kill me only gets me hard.” “Fuck you,” she growls. “Oh, I will fuck you, all right,” he says, and his tongue dips out to lick the rim of my ear. “And you will definitely moan when I bore my way through that wet little pussy of yours.” “You wish.” I can feel my pussy throbbing between my legs, but I ignore it.

The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone, before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with glistening drops as I took it to help her from the car.

I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madrone trees on the horizon. The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon. It called to mind how I noticed the exact same thing when I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the stars around it to shame. I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or if the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head. Something moved on the grounds down beneath my window — cast a long spider of shadow out across the grass as it ran out of sight behind a hedge. When it ran back to where I could get a better look, I saw it was a dog, a young, gangly mongrel slipped off from home to find out about things went on after dark. He was sniffing digger squirrel holes, not with a notion to go digging after one but just to get an idea what they were up to at this hour. He’d run his muzzle down a hole, butt up in the air and tail going, then dash off to another. The moon glistened around him on the wet grass, and when he ran he left tracks like dabs of dark paint spattered across the blue shine of the lawn. Galloping from one particularly interesting hole to the next, he became so took with what was coming off — the moon up there, the night, the breeze full of smells so wild makes a young dog drunk — that he had to lie down on his back and roll. He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales. He sniffed all the holes over again one quick one, to get the smells down good, then suddenly froze still with one paw lifted and his head tilted, listening. I listened too, but I couldn’t hear anything except the popping of the window shade. I listened for a long time. Then, from a long way off, I heard a high, laughing gabble, faint and coming closer. Canada honkers going south for the winter. I remembered all the hunting and belly-crawling I’d ever done trying to kill a honker, and that I never got one. I tried to look where the dog was looking to see if I could find the flock, but it was too dark. The honking came closer and closer till it seemed like they must be flying right through the dorm, right over my head. Then they crossed the moon — a black, weaving necklace, drawn into a V by that lead goose. For an instant that lead goose was right in the center of that circle, bigger than the others, a black cross opening and closing, then he pulled his V out of sight into the sky once more. I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.

(There was an idea much beloved and written about by this country’s philosophers that magic had to do with negotiating the balance between earth and air and water; which is to say that things with legs or wings were out of balance with their earth element by walking around on feet or, worse, flying above the earth in the thin substance of air, obviously entirely unsuitable for the support of solid flesh. The momentum all this inappropriate motion set up in their liquid element unbalanced them further. Spirit, in this system, was equated with the fourth element, fire. All this was generally felt to be a load of rubbish among the people who had to work in the ordinary world for a living, unlike philosophers living in academies. But it was true that a favourite magical trick at fetes was for theatrically-minded fairies to throw bits of chaff or seed-pods or conkers in the air and turn them into things before they struck the ground, and that the trick worked better if the bits of chaff or seed-pods or conkers were wet.) Slower creatures were less susceptible to the whims of wild magic than faster creatures, and creatures that flew were the most susceptible of all. Every sparrow had a delicious memory of having once been a hawk, and while magic didn’t take much interest in caterpillars, butterflies spent so much time being magicked that it was a rare event to see ordinary butterflies without at least an extra set of wings or a few extra frills and iridescences, or bodies like tiny human beings dressed in flower petals. (Fish, which flew through that most dangerous element, water, were believed not to exist. Fishy-looking beings in pools and streams were either hallucinations or other things under some kind of spell, and interfering with, catching, or—most especially—eating fish was strictly forbidden. All swimming was considered magical. Animals seen doing it were assumed to be favourites of a local water-sprite or dangerously insane; humans never tried.)

She begins to strip like a roommate and climb into bed. They have fallen asleep. Dean wakes first, in the early afternoon. He unfastens her stockings and slowly rolls them off. Her skirt is next and then her underpants. She opens her eyes. The garter belt he leaves on, to confirm her nakedness. He rests his head there. Her hand touches his chest and begins to fall in excruciating slow designs. He lies still as a dog beneath it, still as an idiot. The next morning she is recovered. His prick is hard. She takes it in her hand. They always sleep naked. Their flesh is innocent and warm. In the end she is arranged across the pillows, a ritual she accepts without a word. It is half an hour before they fall apart, spent, and call for breakfast. She eats both her rolls and one of his. “There was a lot,” she says. She glistens with it. The inside of her thighs is wet. “How long does it take to make again?” she asks. Dean tries to think. He is remembering biology. “Two or three days,” he guesses. “Non, non!” she cries. That is not what she meant. She begins to make him hard again. In a few minutes he rolls her over and puts it in as if the intermission were ended. This time she is wild. The great bed begins creaking. Her breath becomes short. Dean has to brace his hands on the wall. He hooks his knees outside her legs and drives himself deeper. “Oh,” she breathes, “that’s the best.

This queen seems no better." He came close to me, looking me up and down as a glint of mischief came into his eyes. "But mortals can be entertaining. And they do not break as easily as some think." Wendell's expression went from one of bemusement to towering fury with such abruptness that both Taran and I fell back a step; Taran afterwards looked annoyed as a cat following a moment of gracelessness. There came a terrible rumbling sound, coupled with that same wet rustling with which I am all too familiar, as if the attentive oaks were uprooting themselves en masse and lumbering in our direction. "You are speaking to a queen of Faerie," Wendell said, and it seemed as if the rustling leaves were in his voice.

The Garden of Proserpine" Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams. I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep. Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here. No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine. Pale, without name or number, In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated Comes out of darkness morn. Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well. Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother, The life of fruits and corn; And spring and seed and swallow Take wing for her and follow Where summer song rings hollow And flowers are put to scorn. There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs. We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

And here in Britain the wind moaned through the desolate woods, the skies wept, and wet gale-blown leaves pattered against the windows and stuck there, making little pathetic shadows against the steamy glass. There had been wild weather often enough in his own country, but that had been the wild weather of home; here was the wind and and rain and wet leaves of exile.

Sobbing wildly, he rose above the grain and hewed to left and right over and over and over! He sliced out huge scars in green wheat and ripe wheat, with no selection and no care, cursing, swearing, the blade swinging up in the sun and falling with a singing whistle! Bombs shattered London, Moscow, and Tokyo. The kilns of Belsen and Buchenwald took fire. The blade sang, crimson wet. Mushrooms vomited out blind suns at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The grain wept in a green rain, falling. Korea, Indo-China, Egypt, India trembled; Asia stirred, Africa woke in the night . . . And the blade went on rising, crashing, severing, with the fury and the rage of a man who has lost and lost so much that he no longer cares what he does to the world.

Has it been raining all night?” “Since just after moonhigh,” Firepaw replied. He reached out and prodded her mossy nest cautiously. “Your bedding is soaking wet. Why don’t you move nearer to the nursery? It’s more sheltered there.” “What? And be kept awake all night by those mewling kits! I’d rather get wet!” Yellowfang growled. Firepaw watched her circle stiffly on her mossy bed.

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna. How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur. My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena, ecstatic devourer. O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped the amber—fast honey—from their openness— Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond— to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue— come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips, I am—strummed-song and succubus. They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book— the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel. Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays, Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray. Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera. Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle: What do I see? Hips: Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone. Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread, wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel. Bone basin bone throne bone lamp. Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery— slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit, laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God, I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth for pear upon apple upon fig. More than all that are your hips. They are a city. They are Kingdom— Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire— thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth. Beloved, your hips are the war. At night your legs, love, are boulevards leading me beggared and hungry to your candy house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late and the tables have been cleared, in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake. O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve, a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon, let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming for your dark matter. Along las calles de tus muslos I wander— follow the parade of pulse like a drum line— descend into your Plaza del Toros— hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros. Your arched hips—ay, mi torera. Down the long corridor, your wet walls lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed. I am the animal born to rush your rich red muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan, a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre Manolete—press and part you like a wound— make the crowd pounding in the grandstand of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.

You want me to...kiss you?” I ask. I can see his eyes narrow beneath the cracked skull mask. “No.” He frowns in disgust, as if the idea is sickening to him. “I told you to suck on my tongue. Wrap your lips around it, and suck.” His words, the way he’s demanding, and the wild look in his eyes, has my forehead glossing over with perspiration and my body tense with a mixture of nerves and impulses that are seemingly out of my control. Pressing me against the door, I feel the hardening in his pants as he grinds into me. Just the idea that I can cause such a reaction to a man makes my face flush. He leans down over me, tilting his chin out so our mouths are aligned, his shaggy, wet hair tickling my forehead. He smells like wine, leather, and horrible, soul-shattering decisions.

With bare feet in the dirt, fulmia, ten times with conviction, will shake the earth to its roots, if you have the strength, Jaga’s book had told me, and the Dragon had believed it enough not to let me try it anywhere near the tower. I had felt doubtful, anyway, about conviction: I hadn’t believed I had any business shaking the earth to its roots. But now I fell to the ground and dug away the snow and the fallen leaves and rot and moss until I came to the hard-frozen dirt. I pried up a large stone and began to smash at the earth, again and again, breaking up the dirt and breathing on it to make it softer, pounding in the snow that melted around my hands, pounding in the hot tears that dripped from my eyes as I worked. Kasia was above me with her head flung up, her mouth open in its soundless cry like a statue in a church. “Fulmia,” I said, my fingers deep in the dirt, crushing the solid clods between my fingers. “Fulmia, fulmia,” I chanted over and over, bleeding from broken nails, and I felt the earth hear me, uneasily. Even the earth was tainted here, poisoned, but I spat on the dirt and screamed, “Fulmia,” and imagined my magic running into the ground like water, finding cracks and weaknesses, spreading out beneath my hands, beneath my cold wet knees: and the earth shuddered and turned over. A low trembling began where my hands drove into the ground, and it followed me as I started prying at the roots of the tree. The frozen dirt began to break up into small chunks all around them, the tremors going on and on like waves. The branches above me were waving wildly as if in alarm, the whispering of the leaves becoming a muted roaring. I straightened up on my knees. “Let her out!” I screamed at the tree: I beat on its trunk with my muddy fists. “Let her out, or I’ll bring you down! Fulmia!” I cried out in rage, and threw myself back down at the ground, and where my fists hit, the ground rose and swelled like a river rising with the rain. Magic was pouring out of me, a torrent: every warning the Dragon had ever given me forgotten and ignored. I would have spent every drop of myself and died there, just to bring that horrible tree down: I couldn’t imagine a world where I lived, where I left this behind me, Kasia’s life and heart feeding this corrupt monstrous thing. I would rather have died, crushed in my own earthquake, and brought it down with me. I tore at the ground ready to break open a pit to swallow us all.

How often does it seem that I try to speak the words of not okay, of not alright, only to find they stick to my insides, digging down, burrowing hard within? So instead I wheeze and gasp and smile despite the burning up, the burning alive, oh - I look you in the eye and cry, the tears wetting my cheeks (I am blazing - can you see?) Ash coats my every organ, smoke plumes through my lips to form the lie: "I am fine.

As the shadowy figure beat down on me, I freed a hand and clawed at his face, searching for eyes to gouge out. A row of teeth caught my fingers and bit down hard on them, and then I felt a mixture of blood and saliva drip down my forearm. I screamed and threw a wild elbow, rallying my strength as it collided with a wet smack against the creature’s jaw. He howled in pain and relented just long enough for me to get to my feet.

I think about the people I know with the absolutely largest hearts, people with a stunning capacity for endurance and grace and kindness against the most screaming terrors and pains. My Mom and Dad, for example, enduring the death of their first child at six months old, the boy the brother I never met, dying quietly in his stroller on the porch in the moment that my mother stepped back inside to get a pair of gloves because the crisp brilliant April wind was filled with a whistling cutting wind.... Fifty years later after five more children and two miscarriages she is standing in the kitchen with her usual eternal endless cup of tea and I ask her: How do you get over the death of your child? And she says, in her blunt honest direct terse kind way, You don't. Her face harrowed like a hawk for a moment in the swirling steam of the tea. p112-13

The dead air shapes the dead earth in the dead darkness, further away than seeing shapes the dead earth. It lies dead and warm upon me, touching me naked through my clothes. I said You dont know what worry is. I dont know what it is. I dont know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not. I dont know whether I can cry or not. I dont know whether I have tried to or not. I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

You should have never let him in the house.” Noah stopped in front of the counter. “For God’s sake, Sabella, I thought you would know better than to confront that son of a bitch while you’re carrying my mark.” She kept her head down. How many times had she laughed at Nathan when he had said something similar? When he had been irritated with her, or was just being a man. She should have known better than to go four-wheeling with Sienna that first year they were married, without him, because when she wrecked, she wrenched her ankle and he hadn’t been tere to make sure she was okay. She should have known better than to try to fix a busted pipe in the basement on her own, because she’d ended up drenched and the basement had gotten wet. So many instances. And she should have always known better. She lifted her head. “Now you can leave. You should know better than to piss off an already angry woman.” She should have known better than to give Rory a say in the hiring. “Sabella, sweetheart, look at me.” His voice roughened. “If he had hurt you, I would have had to kill him. I would have enjoyed killing him.” “And it would have been my fault.” She nodded with a bitter smile. “Sure, I understand.” “No, it would have been his fault for being stupid enough to touch you. But haven’t you figured out that yet that men aren’t always smart enough to keep their hands off things that don’t belong to them?” Her head jerked up in surprise. “So you think I belong to you now?” She didn’t flinch when he reached out to touch her. Over the years, she had always had to suppress a flinch when another man tried to stroke her, kiss her. “You don’t belong to him,” he told her, his fingertip stroking over the rasp of his beard that he had left on her jaw. “Testosterone is a dangerous thing sometimes.

I’m just saying that my undies are really, really wet. And I hate wet undies because…” “They chafe,” Zoe concluded. “We know. You’ve been griping about this for the last six hours.” “Because I’ve been chafing for the last six hours!” Mike grumpily adjusted his soggy underwear. “Why doesn’t the CIA have someone working on this? One of the labs there ought to be developing chafe-proof boxers. Those would be a lot more useful on our missions than grappling hooks.

[...] Even then I wanted to slip into the wet dark rectangle and swim on barefoot to other depths where nothing could be seen that was a further story — "Lock" [..] having reached for what is remote, covert during a tender alliance like hidden stairs down into a pond — "Leg Glance" from dark rural highways into a city wild with light I remember you in a rented car in blackness, a loose map on your knees both of us tense with sudden geography [...] — "Night When I Drove

She was crawling around on the floor, laughing and smiling with her eyes rolled back in her head. She gurgled and hacked a clot of phlegm from her throat, then stuck her tongue out and flicked it around, mouthing words I couldn’t begin to understand. “Faye?” I called. “What the fuck are you doing?” She loosed a wet cough, then dashed out from the room and zig-zagged her way toward me. Her arms and legs flailed wildly in exaggerated lunges and her head rolled about like a bowl on a stick.

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness. Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples. When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of dead-looking snow. It had taken him some time to get back to his usual equanimity. He slid down in the warm, foamy water until just his face and his knobby white knees were exposed. Once he had read Wuthering Heights over a weekend and gone to school susceptible to any heroine, only to have the girl who sat in front of him, whom he had admired for some months, emit a loud fart which had murdered him in a small way and kept him from speaking a word to anyone the whole week following. He had laughed at a very funny joke about a Negro when Irwin told it at a party, and then the following day had seen some white men lightly kicking a Negro man in the pants, and temporarily he had questioned laughter altogether. He had gone to several universities with the vague exaltation of Old Man Axelrod and had found only curves and credits. He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind. His solitude now was the result of his metabolism, that constant breathing in of joy and exhalation of sadness. He had come to take shallower breaths, and the two had become mercifully mixed into melancholy contentment. He wondered how pain would breach that low-level strength. "I'm a small man of definite limitations," he declared to himself, and relaxed in the admission.

Tristan held up his arms to the Princess as she came out over the side, and carried her up through the shallows so that when he set her down on the white wave pattered sand, not even the soles of her feet were wet. Now this was the first time that ever they had touched each other, save for the times when the Princess had tended Tristan's wounds, and that was a different kind of touching; and as he set her down, their hands came together, as though they did not want it to be so quickly over. And standing hand in hand, they looked at each other, and for the first time Tristan saw that the Princess's eyes were deeply blue, the colour of wild wood-columbines; and she saw that his were as grey as the restless water out beyond the headland. And they were so close that each saw their own reflection standing in the other one's eyes; and in that moment it was as though something of Iseult entered into Tristan and something of Tristan into Iseult, that could never be called back again for as long as they lived.

As soon as I opened my eyes, my vision was obscured by a large quantity of black fur, a cold, wet nose, and an enormous tongue. I was not offended at all--- quite the contrary--- and let Shadow lick my cheeks before burying my face in his neck. "Poor dear," I murmured. "There, there--- you needn't worry about me leaving you again!" He has been like this each morning since my return, but I can scarcely object. I missed him as much as he missed me, and have vowed never again to venture anywhere he cannot follow.

Street-Cries II. The Ship of Earth Thou ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard, And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold, I fear thee, O! I fear thee, for I hear the tongue and sword At battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold! The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky, But all the deck is wet with blood and stains the crystal red. A pilot, God, a pilot! for the helm is left awry, And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead! Prattville, Alabama, 1868

On the north-western coasts of Britain and Ireland, the air has a remarkable transparency, for it is almost free of particulate matter. Little loose dust rises from the wet land, and the winds blow prevailingly off the sea. Through such air, photons can proceed without obstacle. The light moves, unscattered, and falls upon the forms and objects of those regions with candour. Standing within such a light, you feel thankful for its openness. There is a sense of something having been freely given, without its store having been diminished.

I never knew it could be that intense.” “It’s all about reading what your body wants.” His eyes were growing dark with lust, and I held the sheet tighter around my body, trying to control the fire that was seeping through my veins. “For instance,” he continued, taking my hand and making me stand, “right now, I can tell you want me to touch you.” “H…how can you tell?” “Your breathing is deeper.” Smirking, he moved my hand that was holding onto the sheet. “You keep swallowing, trying to control what you’re denying yourself,” he whispered, undoing the thin material and letting it drop to the floor so I was standing naked before him. “And now I see the evidence.” He chuckled, running his thumbs over my hard nipples before dipping his hand lower into my dripping wet sex. “Oh Jade, I can read you so well already,” Oliver smoldered, leaning down to attack one of my nipples with his mouth while his fingers moved in and out of me. I braced myself, using the table to try and stay upright while attempting to adjust to his sudden attack. He had me yelling out his name within minutes.

In the deep, wet tangled, wild jungle where even natives won't go is a mystical, dangerous river. The river's got no name because naming it would make it real, and no one wanted to believe that river be real. They say you get there only inside a dream-but don't you think of it at bedtime, now, 'cause not everyone who goes there be able to leave! That jungle canopy, it so leafy true daylight can never break in the riverbank, it be wet muck thick with creatures that eat you alive if you stay still too long. To miss that fate, you gots to go into the black water. But the water be heavy as hot tar; once you in, it bind you and pull you along, bit by bit, 'til you come to the end of the land, and then over the water goes in a dark, slow cascade, the highest falls in the history of the world ever. There be demons in that cascading water, and snakes, and wraiths that whisper in your ears. They love you, they say. You should give yourself to them, stay with them, become one of them, they say. 'Isn't it good here?' they say. 'No pain, no trouble.' But also no light and no love and no joy and no ground. You tumble and tumble as you fall, and you try and choose, but your mind be topsy-turvy and maybe you can't think so well, and maybe you can't choose right, and maybe you never wake up. "It felt like that," I tell Tootsie, "even after you got me out and Scott moved me to Highland. I couldn't choose. I couldn't shut out the wraiths...But you would say, 'Hang on, sweetie,' and Scottie would say, 'I miss you, Mama,' and Scott would hold me, just hold me and say nothing at all." Tootsie snorts. "Scott was useless the whole while." "Scott was in the river, too.

The Erl-King O, who rides by night thro’ the woodland so wild? It is the fond father embracing his child; And close the boy nestles within his loved arm, To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm. “O father, see yonder! see yonder!” he says; “My boy, upon what doest thou fearfully gaze?” — “O, ’tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud.” “No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud.” (Tke Erl-King speaks.) “O come and go with me, thou loveliest child; By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled; My mother keeps for thee full many a fair toy, And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy.” “O, father, my father, and did you not hear The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear?” — “Be still, my heart’s darling — my child, be at ease; It was but the wild blast as it sung thro’ the trees.” Erl-King. “O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy? My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy; She shall bear thee so lightly thro’ wet and thro’ wild, And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child.” “O father, my father, and saw you not plain, The Erl-King’s pale daughter glide past thro’ the rain?” — “O yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon; It was the grey willow that danced to the moon.” Erl-King. “O come and go with me, no longer delay, Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away.” — “O father! O father! now, now keep your hold, The Erl-King has seized me — his grasp is so cold!” Sore trembled the father; he spurr’d thro’ the wild, Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child; He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread, But, clasp’d to his bosom, the infant was dead! - From the German of Goethe, translation, 1797.

Here there is buried legend after legend of youth and melancholy, of savage nights and mysterious bosoms dancing on the wet mirror of the pavement, of women chuckling softly as they scratch themselves, of wild sailors’ shouts, of long queues standing in front of the lobby, of boats brushing each other in the fog and tugs snorting furiously against the rush of tide while up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him.

The door had six knobs on its inner side: the uppermost, which matched the outer one, a square of frost-furred crystal, and five beneath it, placed in an uneven row. The first two were of some sort of dark stone, one icy and the other matte and slippery-smooth. The fourth had the look of a tiny aquarium, a cylinder of turquoise sea shafted with sunlight. The bottom two were made of wood. The first was pale, carved with an intricate floral pattern. I could not tell if the second was similarly decorated, for it was largely covered in a wet moss woven with constellations of tiny white flowers.

He smiled then, a slow smile that sent the blood racing through her veins. Lora felt the throbbing inside her intensify until she was sure she would not be able to stand it another second as he slowly, oh, so slowly, lowered his head. His target was her left breast. Lora felt his hot mouth close on the straining nipple, felt him tug the crest of her breast into his mouth to rub it with the rough wet surface of his tongue, and cried out in a frenzy of need. And in that instant he took her. She climaxed at once as he squeezed inside, enormous and hard and fiery hot and filling her to bursting.

Vita Nuova I stood by the unvintageable sea Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray, The long red fires of the dying day Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee: "Alas!" I cried, "my life is full of pain, And who can garner fruit or golden grain, From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!" My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw Nathless I threw them as my final cast Into the sea, and waited for the end. When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw The argent splendour of white limbs ascend, And in that joy forgot my tortured past.

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

Softly, he said, “Why are you crying?” His words made the tears flow faster. “Kestrel.” She drew a shaky breath. “Because when my father comes home, I will tell him that he has won. I will join the military.” There was a silence. “I don’t understand.” Kestrel shrugged. She shouldn’t care whether he understood or not. “You would give up your music?” Yes. She would. “But your bargain with the general was for spring.” Arin still sounded confused. “You have until spring to marry or enlist. Ronan…Ronan would ask the god of souls for you. He would ask you to marry him.” “He has.” Arin didn’t speak. “But I can’t,” she said. “Kestrel.” “I can’t.” “Kestrel, please don’t cry.” Tentative fingers touched her face. A thumb ran along the wet skin of her cheekbone. She suffered for it, suffered for the misery of knowing that whatever possessed him to do this could be no more than compassion. He valued her that much. But not enough. “Why can’t you marry him?” he whispered. She broke her word to herself and looked at him. “Because of you.” Arin’s hand flinched against her cheek. His dark head bowed, became lost in its own shadow. Then he slipped from his seat and knelt before hers. His hands fell to the fists on her lap and gently opened them. He held them as if cupping water. He took a breath to speak. She would have stopped him. She would have wished herself deaf, blind, made of unfeeling smoke. She would have stopped his words out of terror, longing. The way terror and longing had become indistinguishable. Yet his hands held hers, and she could do nothing. He said, “I want the same thing you want.” Kestrel pulled back. It wasn’t possible his words could mean what they seemed. “It hasn’t been easy for me to want it.” Arin lifted his face so that she could see his expression. A rich emotion played across his features, offered itself, and asked to be called by its name. Hope. “But you’ve already given your heart,” she said. His brow furrowed, then smoothed. “Oh. No, not the way you think.” He laughed a little, the sound soft yet somehow wild. “Ask me why I went to the market.” This was cruel. “We both know why.” He shook his head. “Pretend that you’ve won a game of Bite and Sting. Why did I go? Ask me. It wasn’t to see a girl who doesn’t exist.” “She…doesn’t?” “I lied.” Kestrel blinked. “Then why did you go to the market?” “Because I wanted to feel free.” Arin raised a hand to brush the air by his temple, then awkwardly let it fall. Kestrel suddenly understood this gesture she’d seen many times. It was an old habit. He was brushing away a ghost, hair that was no longer there because she had ordered it cut. She leaned forward, and kissed his temple. Arin’s hand held her lightly to him. His cheek slid against hers. Then his lips touched her brow, her closed eyes, the line where her jaw met her throat. Kestrel’s mouth found his. His lips were salted with her tears, and the taste of that, of him, of their deepening kiss, filled her with the feeling of his quiet laugh moments ago. Of a wild softness, a soft wildness. In his hands, running up her thin dress. In his heat, burning through to her skin…and into her, sinking into him.

The modern comforts and conveniences that now most influence our daily experience—cars, computers, television, climate control, smartphones, ultraprocessed food, and more—have been used by our species for about 100 years or less. That’s around 0.03 percent of the time we’ve walked the earth. Include all the Homos—habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and us—and open the time scale to 2.5 million years and the figure drops to 0.004 percent. Constant comfort is a radically new thing for us humans. Over these 2.5 million years, our ancestors’ lives were intimately intertwined with discomfort. These people were constantly exposed to the elements. It was either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy, or too snowy out. The only escape from the weather was a rudimentary

The curve of her bare breast filled my palm, and we both made a noise of pleasure. I tweaked the hard bead of her nipple, loving the way her lids fluttered as her lips parted. She arched into the touch, her head tilting to the side. I kissed my way along her neck, pinching that sweet nipple, tugging it. Oh, but she liked that, whimpering and wiggling, lifting those sweet tits up higher in encouragement. I dipped down and dragged my tongue along one beaded tip. The sound she made was so dirty, hot, and greedy my dick pulsed. Holding that succulent breast plumped in the palm of my hand, I licked, sucked, and kissed it the way I'd been dying to. "Lucian..." She needed more, her hips grinding on my thigh with uncoordinated motions. My free hand moved to her ass---that spectacular ass----and gripped it. I hauled her up close, my mouth finding hers. "Ride me, honey." I worked her on my thigh, holding her ass as she rocked the slick heat of her sex up and down its length. Emma's breasts tickled my chest with every upward thrust, her lips feathering over mine. Our breath mingled, and I stole a kiss, messy and frantic. My cock throbbed for release, fucking ached for it. But watching her lids flutter, the way her gorgeous face strained with pleasure, made it worth the torture. "I'm going to come if you..."----she gasped, nibbled my lower lip----"keep doing that." "Good," I grunted, flexing my thigh, bouncing her. Oh, she loved that. "Come all over me, honey. Let me see you move." Her head fell to my shoulder, her lips nuzzling my neck. She rocked and ground on my thigh, getting it hot and wet. But her clever hand slid down and found my needy dick once more. I made a noise that sounded a lot like pain, but it was unadulterated pleasure that had me pushing up into the clasp of her hand. "Not without you," she said, jacking my length. Our mouths met, and the kiss became a wild thing. I kissed her until I couldn't breathe, then kissed her again. And she moved on me, her hand stroking and pulling. Heat swarmed my skin, licked up my cock. My abs clenched as I groaned, curling myself around her with a shudder of pure lust. "I'm close." "Are you?" "Yeah." Panting now, we worked with each other, harder, faster. The air steamed, and she trembled. "Now, Lucian. Now." "Fuck." "Oh!" Her deep moan, the way she clenched all around me as her orgasm shuddered through her slim frame, set me off. I released with a shout, pulsing so hard my head went light.

It had no taste; a rank smell of blood oozed from it, and I was forced to vomit almost immediately. I tried anew. If I could only keep it down, it would, in spite of all, have some effect. It was simply a matter of forcing it to remain down there. But I vomited again. I grew wild, bit angrily into the meat, tore off a morsel, and gulped it down by sheer strength of will; and yet it was of no use. Just as soon as the little fragments of meat became warm in my stomach up they came again, worse luck. I clenched my hands in frenzy, burst into tears from sheer helplessness, and gnawed away as one possessed. I cried, so that the bone got wet and dirty with my tears, vomited, cursed and groaned again, cried as if my heart would break, and vomited anew. I consigned all the powers that be to the lowermost torture in the loudest voice.

Here is a little boy,” said Bingo, indicating me to the strange lady, “who wets his bed every night. Do you know what I am going to do if you wet your bed again?” she added, turning to me. “I am going to get the Sixth Form to beat you.” The strange lady put on an air of being inexpressibly shocked, and exclaimed “I-should-think-so!” And here occurred one of those wild, almost lunatic misunderstandings which are part of the daily experience of childhood. The Sixth Form was a group of older boys who were selected as having “character” and were empowered to beat smaller boys. I had not yet learned of their existence, and I mis-heard the phrase “the Sixth Form” as “Mrs. Form.” I took it as referring to the strange lady—I thought, that is, that her name was Mrs. Form. It was an improbable name, but a child has 110 judgement in such matters. I imagined, therefore, that it was she who was to be deputed to beat me. It did Dot strike me as strange that this job should be turned over to a casual visitor in no way connected with the school. I merely assumed that “Mrs. Form” was a stern disciplinarian who enjoyed beating people (somehow her appearance seemed to bear this out) and I had an immediate terrifying vision of her arriving for the occasion in full riding kit and armed with a hunting whip. To this day I can feel myself almost swooning with shame as I stood, a very small, round-faced boy in short corduroy knickers, before the two women. I could not speak. I felt that I should die if “Mrs. Form” were to beat me. But my dominant feeling was not fear or even resentment: it was simply shame because one more person, and that a woman, had been told of my disgusting offence.

Maybe I’m not cut out for monogamy,” G. had said to me early on. “Maybe I should just live in a room by myself and have girlfriends.” Another woman might have said, “Now, where did I put my coat?” Being a madly infatuated rationalist who had read her Simone de Beauvoir, I took a deep breath and carefully and calmly explained that of course he had to make up his own mind about how he wanted to live, and that I understood fidelity wasn’t for everyone, that some people could be perfectly happy without it, but I wanted to give my whole self in love and I couldn’t do that if I was being compared to other women on a daily basis (which I was) or if our relationship was only tentative and provisional (which it was). “Sweetie!” he said when I finished. “I love it that you can say how you feel without getting angry at me.” That other woman would have slammed the door behind her before he’d finished speaking. They say philanderers are attractive to women because of the thrill of the chase—you want to be the one to capture and tame that wild quarry. But what if a deeper truth is that women fall for such men because they want to be those men? Autonomous, in charge, making their own rules. Imagine that room G. spoke of, in which the women would come and go—is there not something attractive about it? Rain tapping softly on the tin ceiling, a desk, a lamp, a bed. A woman dashes up the narrow stairs, her raincoat flaring, her wet face lifted up like a flower. And then, the next day—maybe even the same day—different footsteps, another expectant face. I had to admit, it was an exciting scenario. You wouldn’t want to be one of the women trooping up and down the staircase, but you might want to be the man who lived in the room.

Brian Doyle about the Irish custom of “taking to the bed.” He says “In Irish culture, taking to the bed with a gray heart is not considered especially odd. People did and do it for understandable reasons—ill health, or the black dog, or, most horrifyingly, to die during An Gorta Mor, the great hunger, when whole families took to their beds to slowly starve…And in our time: I know a woman who took to her bed for a week after September eleventh, and people who have taken to their beds for days on end to recover from shattered love affairs, the death of a child, a physical injury that heals far faster than the psychic wound gaping under it. I’ve done it myself twice, once as a youth and once as a man, to think through a troubled time in my marriage. Something about the rectangularity of the bed, perhaps, or supinity, or silence, or timelessness; for when you are in bed but not asleep there is no time, as lovers and insomniacs know. Yet, anxious, heartsick, we take to the bed, saddled by despair and dissonance and disease, riddled by muddledness and madness, rattled by malaise and misadventure, and in the ancient culture of my forbears this was not so unusual….For from the bed we came and to it we shall return, and our nightly voyages there are nutritious and restorative, and we have taken to our beds for a thousand other reasons, loved and argued and eater and seethed there, and sang and sobbed and suckled, and burned with fevers and visions and lust, and huddled and howled and curled and prayed. As children we all, every one of us, pretended the bed was a boat; so now, when we are so patently and persistently and daily at sea, why not seek a ship? p. 119-20 Brian Doyle in The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart, p. 90-91

What’s that?” Mr. Bynum said. He leaned over me, fists doubled up. “Vagina, fallopian tube, penis, scrotum,” I said. It took them both aback. I meant for it to. “That ain’t what you said,” Mr. Bynum said. But I had him slightly off guard. “No sir,” I said. “What I said to Mrs. Bynum was cunt and prick and fuck and shit.” I pronounced each word very distinctly. The Bynums were silent. The encounter had taken a bewildering turn. I gave them no time to regroup. “I’m telling you all my favorite words,” I said. “Anus, penis, semen, nipple, clitoris, pubic hair. I can say them louder,” I said. “I can say them faster. Fuck screw ball. Fuck – screw – ball. Fuck screw ball fuck screw ball.” I got to my knees. I spoke louder. “Lick suck lick suck lick suck,” I said. The Bynums were staring. My hair was wild, I was wet and muddy, I was rising from the grass chanting terrible words. I rose, I chanted. “Titillate, masturbate, cunnilingus,” I said. “Cunt prick fuck shit.” I got a little louder as I walked toward Mrs. Bynum. “Cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt,” I said. I turned toward Mr. Bynum. “Nipple nipple nipple nipple,” I said. I was chanting. I was getting louder. They looked scared. I had them backing up. “You maniac!” Mrs. Bynum said. Her voice wasn’t steady anymore. “I want to go in, Lloyd.” They turned and left, but I didn’t stop. I followed them up the sidewalk, weaving from side to side and chanting “Cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt vagina cunt” as if it were a football cheer. Mr. Bynum took Mrs. Bynum’s arm and hurried her on. They stopped at the hospital door and looked back at me with expressions of complete confusion on their faces. We looked at one another. I stopped the obscenities. “Sexual intercourse,” I said quietly. They knew my weapons. They merely stared. Finally they went inside.

Have you ever been kissed before?" She flushed scarlet and had to wet her lips before she could speak. "Not well kissed..." His shoulders shook. "Miss Cross, you leave me speechless." He cupped her jaw in his hand as his other hand came to the small of her back and pulled her against him. "I'll try to do better," he whispered against her mouth, and then he kissed her again. If she had expected another soft touch of his lips against her, she was quickly proven wrong. This time, his mouth settled on hers with intent, firm and insistent. When she gasped at the difference, his tongue slid between her parted lips and teased her until she moaned. He kissed as if he meant to conquer her, and Eliza was all too happy to surrender. His hands moved over her, gripping her waist, sliding up her shoulders to hold the nape of her neck as his mouth traveled over her eyelids and down her jaw. She whimpered as his teeth grazed her earlobe, setting her earring swaying, and she almost melted when his hand brushed her breast. It was an accident, she thought wildly, because they were pressed so close together- somehow her hands had got around his chest, beneath his jacket- but then he did it again. He muttered something profane and tore off his glove, and then it was his bare hand on her breast, his palm cupping her, his fingers teasing along the edge of her bodice until- oh, heavens- his thumb went right over her nipple. Eliza's start of shock turned into a shiver of ecstasy as he stroked the hard little nub again. He pulled her hard against him, until his hips met hers and she felt his unmistakable arousal. His mouth was hot and wet against her neck, and dimly Eliza thought that if he asked, she would tear off her dress and give herself to him right here on Lady Thayne's terrace, in the rain, ten feet away from a ballroom full of people. This was what it meant to want someone with a burning passion. Thank all the saints in heaven she'd got a chance to feel it once in her life...

The company was now come to a halt and the first shots were fired and the grey riflesmoke rolled through the dust as the lancers breached their ranks. The kid's horse sank beneath him with a long pneumatic sigh. He had already fired his rifle and now he sat on the ground and fumbled with his shotpouch. A man near him sat with an arrow hanging out of his neck. He was bent slightly as if in prayer. The kid would have reached for the bloody hoop-iron point but then he saw that the man wore another arrow in his breast to the fletching and he was dead. Everywhere there were horses down and men scrambling and he saw a man who sat charging his rifle while blood ran from his ears and he saw men and he saw men with their revolvers disassembled trying to fit the fit the spare loaded cylinders they carried and he saw men kneeling who tilted and clasped their shadows on the ground and he saw men lanced and caught up by the hair and scalped standing and he saw the horses of war trample down the fallen and a little whitefaced pony with one clouded eye leaned out of the murk and snapped at him like a dog and was gone. Among the wounded some seemed dumb and without understanding and some were pale through the masks of dust and some had fouled themselves or tottered brokenly onto the spears of the savages. Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and up the far side of the ruined ranks in a pipping of boneflutes and dropping down off the side of their mounts with one heel hung in the the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, ridding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows. And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair beneath their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodsoaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming

She danced before me for several minutes, her scarlet dancing silks flashing in the firelight, her bare feet, with their belled ankles, striking softly on the carpet. With a last flash of the finger cymbals, she fell to the carpet before me, her breath hot and quick, her eyes blazing with desire. I was at her side, and she was in my arms. Her heart beat wildly against my breast. She looked into my eyes, her lips trembling, the words stumbling but audible. "Call for the iron," she said. "Brand me, Master." "No, Talena," I said, kissing her mouth. "No." "I want to be owned," she whimpered. "I want to belong to you, fully, completely in every way. I want your brand, Tarl of Bristol, don't you understand? I want to be your branded slave." I fumbled with the collar at her throat, unlocked it, threw it aside. "You're free, my love," I whispered. "Always free." She sobbed, shaking her head, her lashes wet with tears. "No," she wept. "I am your slave." She clenched her body against mine, the buckles of the wide tharlarion belt cutting into her belly. "You own me," she whispered. "Use me.

Something moved on the grounds down beneath my window — cast a long spider of shadow out across the grass as it ran out of sight behind a hedge. When it ran back to where I could get a better look, I saw it was a dog, a young, gangly mongrel slipped off from home to find out about things went on after dark. He was sniffing digger squirrel holes, not with a notion to go digging after one but just to get an idea what they were up to at this hour. He’d run his muzzle down a hole, butt up in the air and tail going, then dash off to another. The moon glistened around him on the wet grass, and when he ran he left tracks like dabs of dark paint spattered across the blue shine of the lawn. Galloping from one particularly interesting hole to the next, he became so took with what was coming off — the moon up there, the night, the breeze full of smells so wild makes a young dog drunk — that he had to lie down on his back and roll. He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales.

What use is knowing anything if no one is around to watch you know it? Plants reinvent sugar daily and hardly anyone applauds. Once as a boy I sat in a corner covering my ears, singing Quranic verse after Quranic verse. Each syllable was perfect, but only the lonely rumble in my head gave praise. This is why we put mirrors in birdcages, why we turn on lamps to double our shadows. I love my body more than other bodies. When I sleep next to a man, he becomes an extension of my own brilliance. Or rather, he becomes an echo of my own anticlimax. I was delivered from dying like a gift card sent in lieu of a pound of flesh. My escape was mundane, voidable. Now I feed faith to faith, suffer human noise, complain about this or that heartache. The spirit lives in between the parts of a name. It is vulnerable only to silence and forgetting. I am vulnerable to hammers, fire, and any number of poisons. The dream, then: to erupt into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting into its tantrum of blades. There has always been a swarm of hungry ghosts orbiting my body—even now, I can feel them plotting in their luminous diamonds of fog, each eying a rib or a thighbone. They are arranging their plans like worms preparing to rise through the soil. They are ready to die with their kind, dry and stiff above the wet earth.

Elizabeth, we’re going to have to stop.” Elizabeth’s swirling senses began to return to reality, slowly at first, and then with a sickening plummet. Passion gave way to fear and then to anguished shame as she realized she was lying in a man’s arms, her shirt unfastened, her flesh exposed to his gaze and touch. Closing her eyes, she fought back the sting of tears and shoved his hand away, lurching into an upright position. “Let me rise, please,” she whispered, her voice strangled with self-revulsion. Her skin flinched as he began to fasten her shirt, but in order to do it he had to release his hold on her, and the moment he did, she scrambled to her feet. Turning her back to him, she fastened her shirt with shaking hands and snatched her jacket from the peg beside the fire. He moved so silently that she had no idea he’d stood until his hands settled on her stiff shoulders. “Don’t be frightened of what is between us. I’ll be able to provide for you-“ All of Elizabeth’s confusion and anguish exploded in a burst of tempestuous, sobbing fury that was directed at herself, but which she hurtled at him. Tearing free of his grasp, she whirled around. “Provide for me,” she cried. “Provide what? A-a hovel in Scotland where I’ll stay while you dress the part of an English gentleman so you can gamble away everything-“ “If things go on as I expect,” he interrupted her in a voice of taut calm, “I’ll be one of the richest men in England within a year-two at the most. If they don’t, you’ll still be well provided for.” Elizabeth snatched her bonnet and backed away from him in a fear that was partly of him and partly of her own weakness. “This is madness. Utter madness.” Turning, she headed for the door. “I know,” he said gently. She reached for the door handle and jerked the door open. Behind her, his voice stopped her in midstep. “If you change your mind after we leave in the morning, you can reach me at Hammund’s town house in Upper Brook Street until Wednesday. After that I’d intended to leave for India. I’ll be gone until winter.” “I-I hope you have a safe voyage,” she said, too overwrought to wonder about the sharp tug of loss she felt at the realization he was leaving. “If you change your mind in time,” he teased, “I’ll take you with me.” Elizabeth fled in sheer terror from the gentle confidence she’d heard in his smiling voice. As she galloped through the thick fog and wet underbrush she was no longer the sensible, confident young lady she’d been before; instead she was a terrified, bewildered girl with a mountain of responsibilities and an upbringing that convinced her the wild attraction she felt for Ian Thornton was sordid and unforgivable.

For the next few days I rose at dawn and walked Dominic to Oakwook Park, where he would run around and chase birds. I felt like a wild woman as I ran beside him, a primal lady of the wolves. He thanked me gleefully, jumping up and licking my face, his cold, wet nose brushing up against mine. I couldn’t believe that his love for me was still so pure and unwavering, and I didn’t even have to work for it. Could a love like that really be trusted? Who was I if I wasn’t trying to make someone love me? I knew that Dominic, unlike the men, would never hurt me. But then why did his pure love feel a little scary while the others had felt strangely safe? I suspected that I was afraid it might make me lazy, not through any fault of my own, but because of a lack of friction: a gradual atrophying of the muscles with nothing to push against, nothing to resist. Or maybe it was something else? Since my mother’s death I had been mistrustful of love, or anything, really, that came too easily, as though it were fool’s gold and could one day, just like she did, disappear. I had spent so much time creating friction for myself: not only in whom I chose to love but in the work I did. I’d made my thesis impossibly hard—harder than it needed to be, ensuring that I might never complete it. Somehow it always felt safer psychologically to do that. But where had it gotten me?

In the end, the cats were rounded up and put into a room. My father went into the room with his First World War revolver, more reliable, he said, than a shotgun. The gun sounded again, again, again, again. The cats that were still uncaught had sensed their fate and were raging and screaming all over the bush, with people after them. My father came out of the room at one point, very white, with tight angry lips and wet eyes. He was sick. Then he swore a good deal, then he went back into the room and the shooting continued. At last he came out. The servants went in and carried off the corpses to the disused well. Some of the cats had escaped – three never came back at all to the murderous household, so they must have gone wild and taken their chances. When my mother returned from her trip, and the neighbour who had brought her had gone, she walked quiet and uncommenting through the house where there was now one cat, her old favourite, asleep on her bed. My mother had not asked for this cat to be spared, because it was old, and not very well. But she was looking for it; and she sat a long time stroking and talking to it. Then she came out to the verandah. There sat my father and there I sat, murderers, and feeling it. She sat down. He was rolling a cigarette. His hands were still shaking. He looked up at her and said: ‘That must never happen again.’ And I suppose it never did.

That is when, I walked into the home as if I would have like any other day, with my head down, going to take a bath and get ready for supper, with guardian Hope. Plus went up to the steps up to my room dripping wet my braindead mind puzzled.' 'My sweet brown shaggy teddy bear was the only thing I grabbed covering my body from dinner, then I went into my room. My pink nighty top on my bed from the night before. Truly, I did not care about my nakedness anymore; after all, I am wild, continuous, unbroken, and untamed.' 'Moderate retardation books,' said Hope when she picked them up under her breath, showing them back into the unzipped backpack. 'I feel so weird, like never before; I sat stark naked in my bed soaking wet, rocking hoping for nightfall to come. to see if the next day I would have to go to school.' 'How? I don't know. Just like fast-forwarding it will only dawn another day. That's going to repeat all the hell ones more, I'm just sure of that.' 'Previously this is my question, I asked myself, as I am laying in my bed holding onto my teddy bear far too tightly. 'Is it me who is the problem, or the ones that are all around me?'' I answer myself- 'I know that there is not one person on this planet, who truly cares if I am even here or not.' Oh, 'God' - 'Why does my life have to be like this?' 'I do not think I can take any more of living in this town or going to this school!

Her skin was warm beneath his hand, and he could feel the ripe curves beneath the lawn nightdress. The material might be opaque, but it did little to disguise the feel of her. He was not a man who resisted temptation. Nor was he a man who prided himself on honor, decency, or fair play. He thought of her eyes as she had listened to the opera, and he tilted his head and pressed his mouth against the base of her throat, beneath the ring of bruises. The pulse leapt beneath his mouth, hammering wildly. In panic or in longing? He didn't care. He turned her in his arms, so that her front pressed up against his. She was a tall woman, taller than those he was used to, and he found she fit him quite nicely, her hips cradling his, her breasts against his chest, her neck within easy reach of his mouth as he traced his way along the abraded flesh. She shivered again, and he liked it. Releasing her face, he slid his hand down between their bodies, into the ripped-open front of her nightdress, and encountered soft female flesh, gently rounded, tantalizing, enchanting, mesmerizing. She was trembling in his arms, with fear, with longing, and the shiver that ran over her warm, scented flesh was irresistible. He wanted her. Wanted to lose himself in her sweet body, wanted to kiss her mouth, her breasts. He wanted oblivion, hot and dark, but oblivion with her, and the hell with his plans, with waiting. He was going to swing her up in his arms and carry her over to the sofa, he was going to drag her upstairs to his bed and strip off her clothes, slowly, and then make love to her, making it last, over and over again, until they were both wet and shaking, and he wouldn't let her escape for days.

It was a feeling that I could be a little different from everyone else of my age, and that, if pushed, I could battle against the forces of nature and prevail. Adventure felt the most natural thing in the world, and it was where I came alive. It is what made me feel, for the first time, really myself. As I got older and the rest of my world got more complicated and unnatural, I sought more and more the identity and wholeness that adventure gave me. In short, when I was wet, muddy, and cold, I felt like a million dollars, and when I was with the lads, with everyone desperately trying to be “cool,” I felt more awkward and unsure of myself. I could do mud, but trying to be cool was never a success. So I learned to love the former and shy away from the latter. (Although I gave “cool” a brief, good go as a young teenager, buying winklepicker boots and listening to heavy metal records all through one long winter, both of which were wholly unsatisfying, and subsequently dropped as “boring.”) Instead, I would often dress up in my “worst” (aka my best) and dirtiest clothes, stand under the hosepipe in the garden, get soaking wet--in December--and then go off for a run on my own in the hills. The locals thought me a bit bonkers, but my dog loved it, and I loved it. It felt wild, and it was a feeling that captured me more and more. Once, I returned from one such run caked in mud and ran past a girl I quite fancied. I wondered if she might like the muddy look. It was at least original, I thought. Instead, she crossed the road very quickly, looking at me as if I were just weird. It took me a while to begin to learn that girls don’t always like people who are totally scruffy and covered in mud. And what I considered natural, raw, and wild didn’t necessarily equal sexy. Lesson still in progress.

Good-bye," he muttered harshly. "Good-bye! Good-bye, mamma!" A wild, strange cry, like that of a beast in pain, was torn from his throat. His eyes were blind with tears; he tried to speak, to get into a word, a phrase, all the pain, the beauty, and the wonder of their lives—every step of that terrible voyage which his incredible memory and intuition took back to the dwelling of her womb. But no word came, no word could come; he kept crying hoarsely again and again, "Good-bye, good-bye." She understood, she knew all he felt and wanted to say, her small weak eyes were wet as his with tears, her face was twisted in the painful grimace of sorrow, and she kept saying: "Poor child! Poor child! Poor child!" Then she whispered huskily, faintly: "We must try to love one another." The terrible and beautiful sentence, the last, the final wisdom that the earth can give, is remembered at the end, is spoken too late, wearily. It stands there, awful and untraduced, above the dusty racket of our lives. No forgetting, no forgiving, no denying, no explaining, no hating. O mortal and perishing love, born with this flesh and dying with this brain, your memory will haunt the earth forever. And now the voyage out. Where? XL The Square lay under blazing moonlight. The fountain pulsed with a steady breezeless jet: the water fell upon the pool with a punctual slap. No one came into the Square. The chimes of the bank's clock struck the quarter after three as Eugene entered from the northern edge, by Academy Street. He came slowly over past the fire department and the City Hall. On Gant's corner, the Square dipped sharply down toward Niggertown, as if it had been bent at the edge. Eugene saw his father's name, faded, on the old brick in moonlight. On the stone porch of the shop, the angels held their marble posture. They seemed to have frozen, in the moonlight.

warmth of the day was making her sleepy, too. “Then you can go and do whatever it is you apprentices do,” she murmured. When Firepaw had cleared away Yellowfang’s dirt, he left her dozing and made his way to the gorse tunnel. He was keen to get to the stream and rinse his paws. “Firepaw!” a voice called from the side of the clearing. Firepaw turned. It was Halftail. “Where are you off to?” meowed the old cat curiously. “You ought to be helping with the preparations.” “I’ve just been putting mouse bile on Yellowfang’s ticks,” replied Firepaw. Amusement flickered through Halftail’s whiskers. “So now you’re off to the nearest stream! Well, don’t come back without fresh-kill. We need as much as we can find.” “Yes, Halftail,” Firepaw replied. He made his way out of the camp and up the side of the ravine. He trotted down to the stream where he and Graypaw had hunted on the day he had found Yellowfang. Without hesitating he jumped down into the cold, clear water. It came up to his haunches, and wet his belly fur. The shock made him gasp, and he shivered. A rustle in the bushes above him made him look up, although the familiar scent that reached his nose told him there was nothing to be alarmed about. “What are you doing in there?” Graypaw and Ravenpaw were standing looking at him as if he were mad. “Mouse bile.” Firepaw grimaced. “Don’t ask! Where are Lionheart and Tigerclaw?” “They’ve gone to join the next patrol,” answered Graypaw. “They ordered us to spend the rest of the afternoon hunting.” “Halftail told me the same thing,” Firepaw mewed, flinching as a chilly current of water rushed around his paws. “Everyone’s busy back at camp. You’d think we were about to be attacked at any moment.” He climbed up onto the bank, dripping. “Who says we won’t be?” mewed Ravenpaw, his eyes flicking from side to side as if he expected an enemy patrol to leap

Then he drops his head back down, pulls my panties all the way to my ankles, and finally makes contact. I fall back against the bed, gasping at the soft, hot, wet feel of Callum's mouth on the most sensitive spot of my body. This is way, way better than any dream. The slow circles he makes with his tongue send heat through every inch of me. Callum is the master of slow burn, setting me on fire from the inside out with just his tongue. It doesn't seem to matter where he chooses to taste me. Every single time his mouth makes contact, I'm engulfed in flames. I'm gasping, whimpering, moaning his name. He hums his approval. He speeds up, then slows down. Then repeats it again and again. Everything he does, it's all divine. With my body on fire, my brain in a pleasure-mush state, I can't form words; only sounds. Pressure builds behind the heat, like I'm boiling over. I twist both hands into the pillow, supporting my head. It's either that or rip the hair from his scalp, because I absolutely cannot handle this level of ecstasy. Callum increases the pressure and then throws in a wild card: suction. Holy hot damn. My whimpers turn into screams. The pressure between my legs builds and builds until every limb is shaking. Just then he eases up, and I finally catch my breath. But then he's back at it, humming against me. I could swear I hear him chuckling. Before I can be sure, he's amping up the pressure, speeding up until I'm thrashing. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to hold on. Seconds, maybe. But minutes? No way on God's green Earth. More pressure, more suction, then bam. Explosion. The simmering slow burn is nowhere to be found. This is a volcanic eruption of ecstasy. It's every muscle ablaze, tensing as climax claims me. It's me shouting, gasping, panting, tugging at the bedsheets, tugging at Callum. It's babbling, going cross-eyed, ending in a sweat-soaked pile in the middle of the bed and never, ever feeling more satisfied than in this moment.

On account of their puny size and disappointing taste, in France wild pears are known as "poires d'angoisse" or pears of anguish. In Versailles, though, in the kitchen garden, pears are bred for pleasure. Of the five hundred pear trees, the best usually fruit in January--- the royal favorite, a type called "Bon Chrétien d'Hiver," or "Good Christian of Winter." Each pear is very large--- the blossom end engorged, the eye deeply sunk--- whilst the skin is a finely grained pale yellow, with a red blush on the side that has been touched by the sunlight. It is known for its brittle, lightly scented, almost translucent flesh that drips with a sugary juice; that soaks your mouth when your teeth sink into it. The gardener here, Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, says that when a pear is ripe its neck yields to the touch and smells slightly of wet roses. This winter they have not ripened, though, but have frozen to solid gold. Murders of crows sit on the branches of the pear trees, pecking at the rime of them. They have become fairy fruit; those dangling impossibilities. What would you give to taste one? Spring always comes, though. Is it not magic? The world's deep magic. March brings the vast respite of thaw, that huge unburdening, that gentling--- all winter's knives and jaws turning soft and blunt; little chunks of ice riding off on their own giddy melt; everything dripping and plipping and making little streams and rivulets; tender pellucid fingers feeling their way towards the sea; all the tiny busywork. And with the returning sun, too, sex. Tulips, first found as wild flowers in Central Asia--- named for the Persian word "tulipan," for turban--- thrust and bow in the warm soil of Versailles, their variegated "broken" petals licked with carmine flames. The early worm-catchers begin their chorus, skylarks and song thrushes courting at dawn. Catkins dangle like soft, tiny pairs of elven stockings. Fairy-sized wigs appear on the pussy willows. Hawthorn and sloe put on their powder and patches, to catch a bee's eye.

The speaker standing on an upturned barrel at the intersection of 135th Street and Seventh Avenue was shouting monotonously: “BLACK POWER! BLACK POWER! Is you is? Or is you ain’t? We gonna march this night! March! March! March! Oh, when the saints — yeah, baby! We gonna march this night!” Spit flew from his looselipped mouth. His flabby jowls flopped up and down. His rough brown skin was greasy with sweat. His dull red eyes looked tired. “Mistah Charley been scared of BLACK POWER since the day one. That’s why Noah shuffled us off to Africa the time of the flood. And all this time we been laughing to keep from whaling.” He mopped his sweating face with a red bandanna handkerchief. He belched and swallowed. His eyes looked vacant. His mouth hung open as though searching for words. “Can’t keep this up,” he said under his breath. No one heard him. No one noticed his behavior. No one cared. He swallowed loudly and screamed. “TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT! We launch our whale boats. Iss the night of the great white whale. You dig me, baby?” He was a big man and flabby all over like his jowls. Night had fallen but the black night air was as hot as the bright day air, only there was less of it. His white short-sleeved shirt was sopping wet. A ring of sweat had formed about the waist of his black alpaca pants as though the top of his potbelly had begun to melt. “You want a good house? You got to whale! You want a good car? You got to whale! You want a good job? You got to whale! You dig me?” His conked hair was dripping sweat. For a big flabby middle-aged man who would have looked more at home in a stud poker game, he was unbelievably hysterical. He waved his arms like an erratic windmill. He cut a dance step. He shuffled like a prizefighter. He shadowed with clenched fists. He shouted. Spit flew. “Whale! Whale! WHALE, WHITEY! WE GOT THE POWER! WE IS BLACK! WE IS PURE!” A crowd of Harlem citizens dressed in holiday garb had assembled to listen. They crowded across the sidewalks, into the street, blocking traffic. They were clad in the chaotic colors of a South American jungle. They could have been flowers growing on the banks of the Amazon, wild orchids of all colors. Except for their voices. “What’s he talking ’bout?” a high-yellow chick with bright red hair wearing a bright green dress that came down just below her buttocks asked the tall slim black man with smooth carved features and etched hair. “Hush yo’ mouth an’ lissen,” he replied harshly, giving her a furious look from the corners of muddy, almond-shaped eyes. “He tellin’ us what black power mean!

Raphael pulled out a paperback and handed it to me. The cover, done back in the time when computer-aided imagine manipulation had risen to the level of art, featured an impossibly handsome man, leaning forward, one foot in a huge black boot resting on the carcass of some monstrous sea creature. His hair flowed down to his shoulders in a mane of white gold, in stark contrast to his tanned skin and the rakish black patch hiding his left eye. His white, translucent shirt hung open, revealing abs of steel and a massive, perfectly carved chest graced by erect nipples. His muscled thighs strained the fabric of his pants, which were unbuttoned and sat loosely on his narrow hips, a touch of a strategically positioned shadow hinting at the world’s biggest boner. The cover proclaimed in loud golden letters: The Privateer’s Virgin Mistress, by Lorna Sterling. “Novel number four for Andrea’s collection?” I guessed. Raphael nodded and took the book from my hands. “I’ve got the other one Andrea wanted, too. Can you explain something to me?” Oh boy. “I can try.” He tapped the book on his leather-covered knee. “The pirate actually holds this chick’s brother for ransom, so she’ll sleep with him. These men, they aren’t real men. They’re pseudo-bad guys just waiting for the love of a ‘good’ woman.” “You actually read the books?” He gave me a chiding glance. “Of course I read the books. It’s all pirates and the women they steal, apparently so they can enjoy lots of sex and have somebody to run their lives.” Wow. He must’ve had to hide under his blanket with a flashlight so nobody would question his manliness. Either he really was in love with Andrea or he had a terminal case of lust. “These guys, they’re all bad and aggressive as shit, and everybody wets themselves when they walk by, and then they meet some girl and suddenly they’re not uber-alphas; they are just misunderstood little boys who want to talk about their feelings.” “Is there a point to this dissertation?” He faced me. “I can’t be that. If that’s what she wants, then I shouldn’t even bother.” I sighed. “Do you have a costume kink? French maid, nurse . . .” “Catholic school girl.” Bingo. “You wouldn’t mind Andrea wearing a Catholic school uniform, would you?” “No, I wouldn’t.” His eyes glazed over and he slipped off to some faraway place. I snapped my fingers. “Raphael! Focus.” He blinked at me. “I’m guessing—and this is just a wild stab in the dark—that Andrea might not mind if once in a while you dressed up as a pirate. But I wouldn’t advise holding her relatives for ransom nookie. She might shoot you in the head. Several times. With silver bullets.

O God of heaven! The dream of horror, The frightful dream is over now; The sickened heart, the blasting sorrow, The ghastly night, the ghastlier morrow, The aching sense of utter woe. The burning tears that would keep welling, The groan that mocked at every tear, That burst from out their dreary dwelling, As if each gasp were life expelling, But life was nourished by despair. The tossing and the anguished pining, The grinding teeth and starting eye; The agony of still repining, When not a spark of hope was shining From gloomy fate's relentless sky. The impatient rage, the useless shrinking From thoughts that yet could not be borne; The soul that was for ever thinking, Till nature maddened, tortured, sinking, At last refused to mourn. It's over now—and I am free, And the ocean wind is caressing me, The wild wind from the wavy main I never thought to see again. Bless thee, bright Sea, and glorious dome, And my own world, my spirit's home; Bless thee, bless all—I cannot speak; My voice is choked, but not with grief, And salt drops from my haggard cheek Descend like rain upon the heath. How long they've wet a dungeon floor, Falling on flagstones damp and grey: I used to weep even in my sleep; The night was dreadful like the day. I used to weep when winter's snow Whirled through the grating stormily; But then it was a calmer woe, For everything was drear to me. The bitterest time, the worst of all, Was that in which the summer sheen Cast a green lustre on the wall That told of fields of lovelier green. Often I've sat down on the ground, Gazing up to the flush scarce seen, Till, heedless of the darkness round, My soul has sought a land serene. It sought the arch of heaven divine, The pure blue heaven with clouds of gold; It sought thy father's home and mine As I remembered it of old. Oh, even now too horribly Come back the feelings that would swell, When with my face hid on my knee, I strove the bursting groans to quell. I flung myself upon the stone; I howled, and tore my tangled hair; And then, when the first gust had flown, Lay in unspeakable despair. Sometimes a curse, sometimes a prayer, Would quiver on my parchèd tongue; But both without a murmur there Died in the breast from whence they sprung. And so the day would fade on high, And darkness quench that lonely beam, And slumber mould my misery Into some strange and spectral dream, Whose phantom horrors made me know The worst extent of human woe. But this is past, and why return O'er such a path to brood and mourn? Shake off the fetters, break the chain, And live and love and smile again. The waste of youth, the waste of years, Departed in that dungeon thrall; The gnawing grief, the hopeless tears, Forget them—oh, forget them all!

This dance was the dance of death, and they danced it for George Buffins, that they might be as him. They danced it for the wretched of the earth, that they might witness their own wretchedness. They danced the dance of the outcasts for the outcasts who watched them, amid the louring trees, with a blizzard coming on. And, one by one, the outcast outlaws raised their heads to watch and all indeed broke out in laughter but it was a laughter without joy. It was the bitter laugh one gives when one sees there is no triumph over fate. When we saw those cheerless arabesques as of the damned, and heard that laughter of those trapped in the circles of hell, Liz and I held hands, for comfort. They danced the night into the clearing, and the outlaws welcomed it with cheers. They danced the perturbed spirit of their master, who came with a great wind and blew cold as death into the marrow of the bones. They danced the whirling apart of everything, the end of love, the end of hope; they danced tomorrows into yesterdays; they danced the exhaustion of the implacable present; they danced the deadly dance of the past perfect which fixes everything fast so it can’t move again; they danced the dance of Old Adam who destroys the world because we believe he lives forever. The outlaws entered into the spirit of the thing with a will. With ‘huzzahs’ and ‘bravos’, all sprang up and flung themselves into the wild gavotte, firing off their guns. The snow hurled wet, white sheets in our faces, and the wind took up the ghastly music of the old clowns and amplified it fit to drive you crazy. Then the snow blinded us and Samson picked us up one by one and slung us back in that shed and leaned up hard against the door, forcing it closed against the tempest with his mighty shoulders. Though bullets crashed into the walls and the wind came whistling through the knotholes and picked up burning embers from the fire, hurling them about until we thought we might burn to death in the middle of the snow and ice, the shed held firm. It rocked this way and that way and it seemed at any moment the roof might be snatched away, but this little group of us who, however incoherently, placed our faiths in reason, were not exposed to the worst of the storm. The Escapee, however, faced with this insurrection of militant pessimism, turned pale and wan and murmured to himself comforting phrases of Kropotkin, etc., as others might, in such straits, recite the rosary. When the storm passed, as pass it did, at last, the freshly fallen snow made all as new and put the camp fire out. Here, there was a shred of scarlet satin and, there, Grik’s little violin with the strings broken but, of the tents, shacks, muskets and cuirasses of the outlaws, the clowns and the clowns themselves, not one sight, as if all together had been blown off the face of the earth.

Lesson one: Pack light unless you want to hump the eight around the mountains all day and night. By the time we reached Snowdonia National Park on Friday night it was dark, and with one young teacher as our escort, we all headed up into the mist. And in true Welsh fashion, it soon started to rain. When we reached where we were going to camp, by the edge of a small lake halfway up, it was past midnight and raining hard. We were all tired (from dragging the ridiculously overweight packs), and we put up the tents as quickly as we could. They were the old-style A-frame pegged tents, not known for their robustness in a Welsh winter gale, and sure enough by 3:00 A.M. the inevitable happened. Pop. One of the A-frame pegs supporting the apex of my tent broke, and half the tent sagged down onto us. Hmm, I thought. But both Watty and I were just too tired to get out and repair the first break, and instead we blindly hoped it would somehow just sort itself out. Lesson two: Tents don’t repair themselves, however tired you are, however much you wish they just would. Inevitably, the next peg broke, and before we knew it we were lying in a wet puddle of canvas, drenched to the skin, shivering, and truly miserable. The final key lesson learned that night was that when it comes to camping, a stitch in time saves nine; and time spent preparing a good camp is never wasted. The next day, we reached the top of Snowdon, wet, cold but exhilarated. My best memory was of lighting a pipe that I had borrowed off my grandfather, and smoking it with Watty, in a gale, behind the summit cairn, with the teacher joining in as well. It is part of what I learned from a young age to love about the mountains: They are great levelers. For me to be able to smoke a pipe with a teacher was priceless in my book, and was a firm indicator that mountains, and the bonds you create with people in the wild, are great things to seek in life. (Even better was the fact that the tobacco was homemade by Watty, and soaked in apple juice for aroma. This same apple juice was later brewed into cider by us, and it subsequently sent Chipper, one of the guys in our house, blind for twenty-four hours. Oops.) If people ask me today what I love about climbing mountains, the real answer isn’t adrenaline or personal achievement. Mountains are all about experiencing a shared bond that is hard to find in normal life. I love the fact that mountains make everyone’s clothes and hair go messy; I love the fact that they demand that you give of yourself, that they make you fight and struggle. They also induce people to loosen up, to belly laugh at silly things, and to be able to sit and be content staring at a sunset or a log fire. That sort of camaraderie creates wonderful bonds between people, and where there are bonds I have found that there is almost always strength.

I looked toward the small vent in the corner of the ceiling through which the music entered my cell. The source must have been far away, for it was just a faint stirring of notes, but when I closed my eyes, I could hear it more clearly. I could... see it. As if it were a grand painting, a living mural. There was beauty in the music- beauty and goodness. The music folded over itself like batter being poured from a bowl, one note atop another, melting together to form a whole, rising, filling me. It wasn't wild music, but there was a violence of passion in it, a swelling kind of joy and sorrow. I pulled my knees to my chest, needing to feel the sturdiness of my skin, even with the slime of the oily paint upon it. The music built a path, an ascent founded upon archways of colour. I followed it, walking out of that cell, through layers of earth, up and up- into fields of cornflowers, past a canopy of trees, and into the open expanse of sky. The pulse of the music was like hands that gently pushed me onward, pulling me higher, guiding me through the clouds. I'd never seen clouds like these- in their puffy sides, I could discern faces fair and sorrowful. They faded before I could view them too clearly, and I looked into the distance to where the music summoned me. It was either a sunset or a sunrise. The sun filled the clouds with magenta and purple, and its orange-gold rays blended with my path to form a band of shimmering metal. I wanted to fade into it, wanted the light of that sun to burn me away, to fill me with such joy that I would become a ray of sunshine myself. This wasn't music to dance to- it was music to worship, music to fill in the gaps of my soul, to bring me to a place where there was no pain. I didn't realise I was weeping until the wet warmth of a tear splashed upon my arm. But even then I clung to the music, gripping it like a ledge that kept me from falling. I hadn't realised how badly I didn't want to tumble into that deep dark- how much I wanted to stay here among the clouds and colour and light. I let the sounds ravage me, let them lay me flat and run over my body with their drums. Up and up, building to a palace in the sky, a hall of alabaster and moonstone, where all that was lovely and kind and fantastic dwelled in peace. I wept- wept to be so close to that palace, wept for the need to be there. Everything I wanted was there- the one I loved was there- The music was Tamlin's fingers strumming my body; it was the gold of his eyes and the twist of his smile. It was that breathy chuckle, and the way he said those three words. It was this I was fighting for, this I had sworn to save. The music rose- louder, grander, faster, from wherever it was played- a wave that peaked, shattering the gloom of my cell. A shuddering sob broke from me at the sound faded into silence. I sat there trembling and weeping, too raw and exposed, left naked by the music and the colour in my mind.

He gripped the sides of her body carefully, keeping her in place as he parted her with his tongue and stroked the sides of the soft furrow. Entranced by the vulnerable shaper of her, he lapped at the edges of softly unfurled lips and tickled them lightly. The delicate flesh was unbelievably hot, almost steaming. He blew a stream of cooling air over it, and relished the sound of her moan. Gently he licked up through the center, a long glide through silk and salty female dampness. She squirmed, her thighs spreading as he explored her with flicks and soft jabs. The slower he went, the more agitated she became. He paused to rest the flat of his tongue on the little pearl of her clitoris to feel its frantic throbbing, and she jerked and struggled to a half-sitting position. Pausing, Keir lifted his head. "What is it, muirninn?" Red-faced, gasping, she tried to pull him over her. "Make love to me." "'Tis what I'm doing," he said, and dove back down. "No- Keir- I meant now, right now-" She quivered as he chuckled into the dark patch of curls. "What are you laughing at?" she asked. "At you, my wee impatient bully." She looked torn between indignation and begging. "But I'm ready," she said plaintively. Keir tried to enter her with two fingers, but the tight, tender muscle resisted. "You're no' ready," he mocked gently. "Weesht now, and lie back. 'Tis one time you won't be having your way." He nuzzled between her thighs and sank his tongue deep into the heat and honey of her. She jerked at the feel of it, but he made a soothing sound and took more of the intimate flavor he needed, had to have, would never stop wanting. Moving back up to the little bud where all sensation centered, he sucked at it lightly until she was gasping and shaking all over. He tried to work two fingers inside her again, and this time they were accepted, her depths clenching and relaxing repeatedly. As he stroked her with his tongue, he found a rhythm that sent a hard quiver through her. He kept the pace steady and unhurried, making her work for it, making her writhe and arch and beg, and it was even better than he'd imagined, having her so wild beneath him, hearing her sweet little wanton noises. There was a suspended moment as it all caught up to her... she arched as taut as a drawn bow... caught her breath... and began to shudder endlessly. A deep and primal satisfaction filled him at the sounds of her pleasure, and the sweet pulsing around his fingers. He drew out the feeling, patiently licking every twitch and tremor until at last she subsided and went limp beneath him. Even then, he couldn't stop. It felt too good. He kept lapping gently, loving the salty, silky wetness of her. Her weak voice floated down to him... "Oh, God... I don't think... Keir, I can't..." He nibbled and teased, breathing hotly against the tender core. "Put your legs over my shoulders," he whispered. In a moment, she obeyed. He could feel the trembling in her thighs. A satisfied smile flicked across his mouth, and he pressed her hips upward to a new angle. Soon he'd have her begging again, he thought, and lowered his head with a soft growl of enjoyment.

I was in a copse of pine trees, and the pine was overpowering my scent. The pheromones of the big cat mingled with the pine and I spun around. I was smelling and looking for the flash of white, but I couldn’t see it. I grew angry and I pawed at the earth. The aroma of the soil cleansed my nose as I leaned down and sniffed deeply. I slowly closed and opened my eyes. As I looked ahead I saw something. There, further on, I had another glimpse of the large white cat. She was stopped and her hindquarters were in the air. I stared, trying to figure out what she was doing. Her forepaws and head were on the ground, but her hind was wiggling. She was next to a tree, marking it, so I slowly paced in a zigzag pattern as I walked close to her. I was being cautious because poachers had been known to employ shifters to entice real animals in the wild. She turned her head and growled at me. I took it as an invite to come closer. I ran up to her and started circling. She was an albino panther as I thought. I paced closer, breathing deep. I was in the middle of Ohio, outside of a lost cougar and a few bobcats there were no big cats here, at least not counting lycanthropes, and this creature didn’t smell like one of those. Her rump almost wagged in anticipation, and I felt my tiger body respond. I circled her, taking a swipe in her direction to see if she was going to respond negatively to me. The pink eyes followed me and she growled. I walked up to her, sniffed her face and neckline. I didn’t smell any other male on her, and I walked to her raised rump. Burying my nose in her groin I smelled deeper, and she shifted her body. I felt it before I could see it. She was shifting, changing from albino panther to human. I sat on my hindquarters as I watched. Her white fur seemed to melt from her, sliding upwards, starting with her back legs. The flesh and fur on her feet slid forward, leaving human feet and calves. It was fully fleshed, unlike some lycanthrope changes when they’re younger. The calves of her legs appeared, and slowly slid up. The panther flesh was sliding forward, slowly and methodically. Across her ass and groin, now lower back and stomach. The pheromones I smelled earlier were coming from her, the human form. I stood and started pacing behind her, and her panther head shook in a very human gesture. I stopped, fighting the desire to lean forward and lick her wetness with my large tongue. The flesh was sliding forward and as her teats turned into breasts, I growled in need. Next were her shoulders and arms, then her head and hands. As the transformation ended, there was a pile of fur and flesh lying in front of her. Her human form was beautiful; a full figured woman with long white hair, that was perfectly natural. She looked to be in her early forties, but didn’t have a line on her face that she didn’t want. In the corners of her eyes were small, but beautiful, crow’s feet, laugh lines surrounded her mouth. She laid out with her former form under her, laying on it, propped up by her elbows. She smiled with the confidence of someone who was used to being in charge. Her long hair flowed around her shoulders, framing her body. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who.

My little undomesticated pornstar pushed me so hard between her legs, my oxygen levels plummeted. She clenched around my fingers through her panties as an orgasm rolled through her in waves. The gush of warmth soaked the cotton. I kissed her through the fabric, again and again, knowing tomorrow everything would return to its proper position—my boundaries, my limits, my hang-ups, my demons. “Can I return the favor?” Dallas sat half up. “But not through your briefs. Men’s briefs always smell like old cheese that’s been sitting in a crockpot for days. I know because whenever my housekeeper went on vacation, we all took turns doing the laundry. And, well, I really shouldn’t say, but Dadd—” Not wanting the moment to be ruined with a conversation about her father’s underwear, I pulled forward, shutting her smart mouth with a kiss that tasted like her sweet pussy. At first, she pinched her lips and made a face, unsure what she thought about her own taste. But when I dragged the tip of my hard cock along her slit through our clothes, she went wild and kissed me back, shoving her tongue so deep down my throat I thought she would fish out my dinner. “Yes.” She wiggled against me. “Please, sir, may I have some more?” She’d quoted Oliver Twist while getting fucked. Truly, the woman was one of a kind. Knowing it was idiotic, and dangerous, and deranged, I pushed my tip through her slit. She was tight—tighter, still, through the tattered, stretched cotton of her ruined panties—but wet and sleek, ready for what was coming. The sensation, how warm and taut she felt, completely undid me. I thrust harder and deeper, entering her through our underwear, fucking her slowly with only flimsy fabric between us. I tore my mouth from hers, eyes glued to my cock each time it sank into her. I could barely fit inside, she was so tight. This was, by far, the best fuck I’d ever had. She panted. “Is this what people call dry-humping?” No. Nothing about this was dry. I was basically fucking her through our underwear. Only, explaining to her that this was full-blown sex with a side order of my issues was not in my plans for tonight. Or ever. “Sure.” Each push brought me closer to a climax. From slow, controlled, teasing thrusts designed to drive her mad with desire, I quickly derailed to jerky, manic, need-to-be-inside-this-woman plunges. Of a man so hungry for human connection, for affection, for carnal needs to be met and satisfied. My head grew dizzy. I’d taken into consideration the possibility that Dallas couldn’t come through penetration. It merely placed her in the same majority as most females on Planet Earth. But she shook, clawed, and reached for me, looking ready to climax. Her tits bounced and jiggled each time I slammed into her. Her mouth opened in awe, probably because this orgasm felt different from the first two. Deeper and more violent. She clutched the lapels of my shirt, shoving her face in mine. “Lose the underwear.” She met my thrust, groaning when my crown peeked past the slot in my boxer briefs. “I want you to come inside me. I want to feel you.” I was about two seconds from fulfilling her demand. Luckily, my logic grabbed the steering wheel, which my cock had seized sometime this evening, and derailed the situation from full-blown calamity. I managed to wait until she came, just barely, before pulling out, flipping her onto her stomach, and jerking off. I aimed for her bare ass but somehow came on her hair. No matter. She had plenty of time to wash it. Her agenda wasn’t exactly full. Dallas fell back onto the pillows, a lopsided grin on her face. (Chapter 31)

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

No,” I snarled before he could make the call official. “My father came to watch me play.” My gaze slid to the stands where my dad’s eyes were on me, filled with concern. Behind him, my step mother watched too and though she hid it from the world, I could see the pleasure she was taking in seeing me fail. I couldn’t let that stand. “If you’re going to keep playing then you need to suck it up,” Orion demanded. “Head in the game, work through the pain.” His favourite catch phrase had never seemed so literal. “I’m in,” I growled, forcing my thoughts away from the constant burn. I looked back at the pitch just in time to see an inflatable Pegasus sex toy floating over the Starlight crowd with Caleb’s name scrawled along its side and an arrow pointing at its open ass. Cal noticed it too and he fumbled his throw, his aim way off as he passed the ball to Darius who dove forward to try and save it. His fingertips brushed it but the Starlight Airsentry threw a gust of wind at the ball and it fell to the ground with a wet thump. My lips parted with horror as the scoreboard lit up with a -5 score to Zodiac and the Starlight crowd went wild. Darius snatched the ball back up and managed to hook it to Seth who slammed it into the Pit but that only brought us up to -4. “What the fuck is happening?” Orion murmured in disbelief. My time out of the game was up so I raced back onto the pitch to await the next ball without another word. I moved from foot to foot, trying to ignore the burning agony which had now firmly found its way between my ass cheeks. The whistle sounded, a flaming ball burst from the Fire Hole and once again the game was on. I just had to force my way through it until the end. (Max POV)

Eén leerling had dat al gedaan, die had die ochtend thuis mascara opgedaan en dat was de aanleiding geweest om het daar klassikaal over te hebben. De juffrouw wilde het bespreken met de meisjes, want make-up, dat ging alleen meisjes wat aan. Esther deelde ook de conclusie met ons. Voorlopig mochten de meisjes geen getekende versiering in het gezicht aanbrengen, want dat zou voor te veel onrust zorgen. Zo leerde ik dat make-up alleen voor meisjes was en niet voor jongens. Een nieuwe wet...

I fell. Wildly. Relentlessly. My hands clenched around wet, slimy things. Cold mud. Decaying leaves. I was a doll, a stone—useless, useless—slamming into branches and the sharp underside of tree roots.

The excessively rich were as shy as wild birds; everybody was hunting them and they took wing at the least hint of danger. They were abnormally sensitive and had to be handled as if they were made of wet tissue paper. They would absorb flattery like sponges—but only that subtle kind which assured them that they were above flattery.

Breath!’ A voice, wild with anxiety, ordered, and I felt a cruel stab of pain where I recognized the voice because it wasn't Marcel’s. I could not obey. The waterfall pouring from my mouth didn't stop long enough for me to catch a breath. The black, icy water filled my chest, burning. The rock smacked into my back again, right between my shoulder blades, and another volley of water choked its way out of my lungs. ‘Breathe, Bell! C'mon!’ Marcel begged. Black spots bloomed across my vision, getting wider and wider, blocking out the light. The rock struck me again. The rock wasn't cold like the water; it was hot on my skin. I realized it was Marcel’s hand, trying to beat the water from my lungs. The iron bar that had dragged me from the sea was also… warm… My head whirled; the black spots covered everything… Was I dying again, then? I didn't like it. This wasn't as good as the last time. It was only dark now, nothing worth looking at here. The sound of the crashing waves faded into the black and became a quiet, even whoosh that sounded like it was coming from the inside of my ears… ‘Bell?’ Marcel asked, his voice still tense, but not as wild as before. ‘Bells, honey, can you hear me?’ The contents of my head swished and rolled sickeningly like they'd joined the rough water… ‘How long has she been unconscious?’ someone else asked. The voice that was not Marcel’s shocked me, jarred me into a more focused awareness. I realized that I was still. There was no tug of the current on me-the heaving was inside my head. The surface under me was flat and motionless. It felt grainy against my bear arms. ‘I don't know,’ Marcel reported, still frantic. His voice was very close. Hands-so warm they had to be his- I brushed wet hair from my cheeks. ‘A few minutes? It didn't take long to tow her to the beach.’ The quiet whooshing inside my ears was not the waves-it was the air moving in and out of my lungs again. Each breath burned-the passageways were as raw as if I'd scrubbed them out with steel wool. But I was breathing. And I was freezing. A thousand sharp, icy beads were striking my face and arms, making the cold worse. ‘She's breathing. She'll come around. We should get her out of the cold, though. I don't like the color she's turning…’ I recognized Sam's voice this time. ‘You think it's okay to move her?’ ‘She didn't hurt her back or anything when she fell?’ ‘I don't know.’ They hesitated.

My eyes slowly slide open, my breaths coming in pants with little mewls of pleasure. Wild Man peers down at me from his kneeled position. He wipes the back of his arm across his mouth, but his beard is still wet with my release. He fists his cock, the head an angry red with a clear pearl of pre-cum clinging to the slit, angling it down toward my entrance. Before he can plunge inside, I press against the bed to sit up enough so I can grab a handful of his hair. I tug him down and meet him halfway with my lips.

As you can probably guess, Wild Man likes sex. He likes a lot of sex. Doesn’t matter where we are, what we’re doing, or the time of day. If he becomes randy, he pounces. Take yesterday for instance, while we were out picking berries. I was down on my knees trying to reach a nice juicy patch of plump blackberries. Of course, I was naked—he still refuses to give me clothes, the bastard—so my wiggling bare ass was up in the air. The next thing I knew, big hands were gripping my hips and pulling me back, angling me where he wanted me. I knew what was coming, and I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn’t ready—seriously, who would be while picking berries and getting poked by thorns—but my protest died on a cry of sharp pain. No preparation. He just went for it as usual. And I was as dry as Sister Mary. So the sudden intrusion wasn’t comfortable in the slightest, and I couldn’t imagine it was much better for him. Did he care, though? Nope. He just kept going, banging me as hard as he could. Thankfully—or not thankfully, depending on how you look at it—it didn’t take long to get my juices flowing. That’s what happens when you’re unbelievably attracted to the man who’s holding you captive. Your body gives your mind a big fuck you, along with the middle finger, and takes what it wants, even begging for more or to go faster, harder. Another time, we were walking back from taking a bath. I was admiring a patch of pretty flowers and telling Wild Man a funny story about Rika. I was laughing and having a surprisingly good time, when my hips were suddenly caught in his hard grip. I was shoved over a large boulder, my breasts pressed against the abrasive surface. Then he mounted me from behind and fucked me silly. That time, I was wet. He had just fucked me in the water, and I still had part of him leaking out of me.

I’m rinsing soap out of my hair when I hear the metal rungs of the shower curtain scrape against the rounded rod holding it up. I crack an eye open against the wetness to see her watching me. “Everything okay?” I ask, wiping the water from my face. “Yeah. I just wanted to see what you looked like in here. It was kind of on my bucket list.” She shrugs. “I’m not at all disappointed.” She smiles before closing the curtain and leaving me slack-jawed and wildly amused. My ray of sunshine strikes again.

If what she had done made her compromised, or mature, or if both were the same. She tried casting last night as an age-defining Graduate-style affair. One she'd later look back on with some distance, laugh off as a wild anecdote. But there was only the hollowness in her gut, and the memory of warm, wet liquid dripping down her stomach.

Victoria pounded her hips down to meet every thrust. She loved his roughness. After a while, she closed her eyes, wet her lips with her tongue, and rode him like she was atop a wild stallion.

It’s wrong, to get fucked outside on the street. It’s wrong to like it. It’s wrong to be so powerless and so wet for it

This is how these dualities exist in one person. The sunshine laughter. The agonized tears. The wet cunt. Perhaps they’re not as contradictory as I thought. Perhaps there is another way to live, other than in pain and grief and vengeance.

One dim wet evening in early spring, when a shabby old world was trying to wash the winter grime from its face before it must welcome April, there was wild music among the birches

At night, Luna dreamed of her mum's magical stories about a wide, wide world beyond the garden. Piggies dipped their snouts in cool mud and foraged for roots in this special, secret place known as The Wet Wild Woods.

Something stirred the air at my back--- that was all I noticed, a gentle breeze--- and suddenly Orga had turned and lunged at something behind me so swiftly she seemed to melt into pure shadow. When I turned, I found her rolling across the forest floor in a tangle of feathers and long, horrific black legs, her jaw locked around the guardian's neck. The creature went still a heartbeat later, letting out a final, wet wheeze as its legs twitched.

The fox melted back into the shadows of the cave, but not before I sensed something terribly amiss about it, which jarred at my awareness like a toothache. "Emily," Rose murmured. I turned. Several more of the little vulpine Folk, perched upon a log on the bank--- for naturally they were Folk, like the one I'd observed briefly by the cottage; I felt irritated at myself for not realizing it before. Even at close range, they looked a great deal like foxes in all but their faces, which reminded me of a human infant, all overlarge eyes and small rosebud mouths. They might have been small children wearing costumes, but for the unnerving glint of very small, but very sharp teeth, and the wet, all-black of their eyes. They darted in and out of the meadow grass, which was riddled with foxholes, so quick it was difficult to ascertain their number, except that it was great.

I’m soaking wet now, probably drenching Aaron’s thighs. Doesn’t matter though. That’s the best part, I think, the mess of it. Sex isn’t supposed to be pretty. It’s too wild, too base, but it also keeps you grounded. We are souls having a worldly experience, but we are also human.

I don’t care about our pasts,” I call out to him. “I don’t care about this,” I add, dropping the wet documents into the surf. The tide pulls them back and I lose them in the waves. “Stand here with me and let the rain wash it all away.

You’re so wet,” he murmured. “You like this.” His voice was soft, reverent, his eyes questioning. “I love this,” I breathed, and he smiled. It’s you. With anyone else? Maybe not. But having this wild, beautiful man under my control, it was everything.

Bundled in her old clothes, she pushed open the door of the cottage and stepped out into a wet, chill day. The wind slapped her face. Her disgust and hatred for all she had been rose like a tide in her. The meadow vista before her ended in the river, cold, gray, and relentless. She had been caught in it once and nearly drowned. She let the thought form in her mind. It would be quick. Cold and unpleasant but quick. She spoke aloud the words that had rattled through her dreams all night. “Time to end this life.” She lifted her face. The wind was pushing heavy clouds across a distant blue sky. You would kill yourself? Over that? Because Rapskal told you what you already knew? Sintara’s touch on her mind was coldly amused. The dragon’s consideration was distant and impartial. I recall that my ancestors witnessed humans doing this, deliberately choosing to terminate a life span that is already so brief as to be insignificant. Like gnats flying into flames. They flung themselves into rivers, or hanged themselves from bridges. So. The river? Is that how you will do this? Sintara had not touched minds with her for weeks. For her to return now and to be so coldly curious fired anger in Alise. She scanned the sky. There. A tiny wink of sapphire against the distant clouds. She spoke aloud, giving vent to her outrage, as in a single heartbeat despair became defiance. “End this life, I said. Not end MY life.” She watched the dragon tip her wings and slide down the sky toward the hills. Change took root in her, grew. “Kill myself? In despair over all the days I’ve wasted, all the ways I’ve deceived myself? What would that do except prove that in the end I still could not escape my own foolishness? No. I’m not ending my life, dragon. I’m taking it. I’m making it mine.” For a long moment she felt nothing from Sintara. Probably the dragon had spotted some prey and lost all interest in the gnat-lifed woman who could not even kill a rabbit for her. Then, without warning, the dragon’s thoughts boomed through her mind again. The shape of your thoughts has changed. I think you are finally becoming yourself. As she stared, the dragon suddenly clapped her wings tight to her body and dived on her prey. The immediate absence of the dragon’s touch on her mind was like a gust of wind boxing her ears. She was left stunned and alone.

Bundled in her old clothes, she pushed open the door of the cottage and stepped out into a wet, chill day. The wind slapped her face. Her disgust and hatred for all she had been rose like a tide in her. The meadow vista before her ended in the river, cold, gray, and relentless. She had been caught in it once and nearly drowned. She let the thought form in her mind. It would be quick. Cold and unpleasant but quick. She spoke aloud the words that had rattled through her dreams all night. “Time to end this life.” She lifted her face. The wind was pushing heavy clouds across a distant blue sky. You would kill yourself? Over that? Because Rapskal told you what you already knew? Sintara’s touch on her mind was coldly amused. The dragon’s consideration was distant and impartial. I recall that my ancestors witnessed humans doing this, deliberately choosing to terminate a life span that is already so brief as to be insignificant. Like gnats flying into flames. They flung themselves into rivers, or hanged themselves from bridges. So. The river? Is that how you will do this? Sintara had not touched minds with her for weeks. For her to return now and to be so coldly curious fired anger in Alise. She scanned the sky. There. A tiny wink of sapphire against the distant clouds. She spoke aloud, giving vent to her outrage, as in a single heartbeat despair became defiance. “End this life, I said. Not end MY life.” She watched the dragon tip her wings and slide down the sky toward the hills. Change took root in her, grew. “Kill myself? In despair over all the days I’ve wasted, all the ways I’ve deceived myself? What would that do except prove that in the end I still could not escape my own foolishness? No. I’m not ending my life, dragon. I’m taking it. I’m making it mine.” For a long moment she felt nothing from Sintara. Probably the dragon had spotted some prey and lost all interest in the gnat-lifed woman who could not even kill a rabbit for her. Then, without warning, the dragon’s thoughts boomed through her mind again. The shake is your thoughts has changed. I tbh m you are finally becoming yourself. As she stared, the dragon suddenly clapped her wings tight to her body and dived on her prey. The immediate absence of the dragon’s touch on her mind was like a gust of wind boxing her ears. She was left stunned and alone.

Wendell pushed the door open. Light. It was full morning, and my vision flooded with color. Primarily green, but there was also the yellow of moss and lichened stone, the violet of bluebells clustered at the edge of the forest, the gold of sunbeams, and the rich azure of the sky. The door opened onto a hill in a small clearing, beyond which a wall of trees nodded their boughs in the wind, as if in greeting. The air was wet from a recent rain and heavy with the smell of green and growing things--- all as I remembered.

A flat tongue rolls up and over my lips, interrupting my words. The warm, wet lick continues down my neck, where he takes the opportunity to clean me. The heat travels between my thighs and I feel myself contract with need. He grips my wrist, lifting my hand as his tongue trails over my palm while wild eyes connect with mine, removing Saint’s touch entirely, before gripping both wrists and pinning them above my head. “Aero, he’s on his way...” I whisper, his nose tracing the line of my jaw before he breathes in the scent of my hair in the hypnotic way that he does. I feel dizzy

I want you too.” Her words are no more than a whisper “I want you. And Jadi,” she admits, and there’s a raw vulnerability in those simple words that I don’t understand. “I shouldn’t, should I? Want you both, I mean? Like that?” I roll to my side to stare at her in disbelief. With how close I am to her, the move has my face coming dangerously close to her own. “You want me?” “Why?” I ask. But I already know the answer. Because no one knows where Astarte’s arrow will strike, but when she aims, she strikes true. Because the gods are cruel and love to toy with their half-mortal children even more than they love to play with the mortals. Because Adrienne’s fate is somehow woven with mine and Jadi’s. Jadi told me that, he told me, and –fool that I am – I ignored him. “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to soften my voice. To curb the mocking, defensive bite in my words. “I just don’t see how you could. Not after how I’ve treated you.” Adrienne gives me a lopsided grin, then reaches over to lightly pat my shoulder. “You not that bad.” Her smile falls, expression growing serious. “I don’t know how explain it. I just feel… it feels…” she trails off, brow furrowing in frustration. She tucks her hands under her chin, and without thinking about it, I grasp them in my own. “I know.” The words come out in a low rumble. “I know. You don’t have to explain.” Because I feel it too. The pull towards her. It’s more than a physical attraction. More than desire – though that is certainly part of it. And now that I’m looking at her, with her mouth close to my own and her hands in mine and the heat of her body mixing with my own beneath the blankets. It feels right, and there’s no room for hesitation. Only action. I lean forward, slowly enough that she has time to object, my eyes never leaving her own. My nose brushes against hers for a brief moment, and then she’s pushing forward, her lips pressing against mine with a raw urgency that has fire racing through my veins and lust clouding my vision. It’s too much. Too much. I pull back, angling my body over hers, keeping my weight on my elbows as I cup her face in one hand, my thumb stroking the underside of her jaw, fingers tangling in her loose hair. I stare down at her – at her dilated pupils and sleep-mussed hair. At her parted lips and the delicate line of her throat. I can see her pulse thundering beneath the skin, and the rosy flush spreading down her neck. She’s so delicate. I’m torn between wanting to worship her and devour her. Carefully, I brush my mouth against hers, then trace the shape of her lips with my teeth and tongue. My hands tremble where they grip her face, keeping her from chasing my teasing kisses. It’s almost embarrassing, the way I’m quaking like an autumn leaf above her. She lets out a frustrated whimper, and I deepen the kiss, swallowing up the sound as I tangle my tongue with her own. When her own kisses become more insistent, I pull back, waiting for her to retreat before delving forward again. “Good,” I murmur, my thumb stroking her pulse point when she relaxes beneath me. “There’s no rush.” I’m speaking more to myself than to her. Because more than anything, I want to feel myself buried deep inside her. I want to push the fabric between us aside and feel her wet and clenching around me. I want to bury my head between her thighs and taste her, to turn those faint whimpers into wild, throaty cries. But now isn’t the time for that. I kiss her again, slowly this time. Deep. Controlled. I need to be controlled. Take this slow. Her thighs part, long limbs twining with mine, the heels of her feet pressing against the backs of my legs. Pulling me towards her, until my cock is pressed against her core and I can practically feel the heat of her, even with our clothes between us. She rocks against me, her faint mewling cry swallowed up by my mouth, and it’s like something in me snaps. Something primal and hungry and dark. Something that’s only come out with Jadi.

Twelve years ago I left Boston and New York, and moved east and west at the same time. East, to a little village in Devon, England, a town I’ve been familiar with for years, since my friends Brian and Wendy Froud and Alan Lee all live there. It had long been my dream to live in England, so I finally bought a little old cottage over there. But I decided, both for visa and health reasons, living there half the year would be better than trying to cope with cold, wet Dartmoor winters. At that point, Beth Meacham had moved out to Arizona, and I discovered how wonderful the Southwest is, particularly in the wintertime. Now I spend every winter-spring in Tucson and every summer-autumn in England. Both places strongly affect my writing and my painting. They’re very opposite landscapes, and each has a very different mythic history. In Tucson, the population is a mix of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Euro-Americans of various immigrant backgrounds — so the folklore of the place is a mix of all those things, as well as the music and the architecture. The desert has its own colors, light, and rhythms. In Devon, by contrast, it’s all Celtic and green and leafy, and the color palette of the place comes straight out of old English paintings — which is more familiar to me, growing up loving the Pre-Raphaelites and England’s ‘Golden Age’ illustrators. I’ve learned to love an entirely different palette in Arizona, where the starkness of the desert is offset by the brilliance of the light, the cactus in bloom, and the wild colors of Mexican decor.

Knock us out,” Hook stated. “You got something exciting that’ll trip our triggers, we’ll drink it. Just as long as it’s wet and cold. Got a long length of road down my throat and that always tastes good, but it’s time to wash it away.

Darky ate slowly, enjoying every morsel, his mouth salivating so wildly that he worried at the loud sloshing sound he made. But it was lost in all the other wet noises of the night.

looked up at me. Very content with herself, she opened her mouth, showed me the great job she did on me--- by holding all of my cum in her mouth. Once she got a real nasty look at me, only then she finally felt satisfied enough to swallow it, wetting her lips and savoring the after taste.   I simply looked at her with my head tilted sideways. You....fucking...slut. If only I could have said that out loud, but as a hell of a compliment.   "Knock knock knock..." There goes the door again.   "Okay, that's it! Get the fuck up, now!" My fatherly instinct came over me for a moment as I dragged her off her feet and zipped my pants-- a bit of a bulge still relatively visible under my pants. I pulled my shirt down as a last ditch effort.   I approached the front door and opened it with curiosity.   "Sorry,

But then his tongue moved over me and started to lick the whipped cream over my sex, making my legs fall open, swiping the creamy coolness down and over my cleft, making a long, ragged moan escape me, dragging a rumbling sound from his chest that made another rush of wet pool as his mouth closed over my clit and sucked hard. Then he devoured me, drove me up fast and unrelenting until the orgasm started to crest, seeming to start at the base of my spine and exploding outward until it took over whole body, making me cry out his name as he took possession of my clit and sucked it in pulses as the waves washed over me, dragging it out, intensifying everything. As soon as the waves lessened, he released me and licked a line back upward, taking the whipped cream off my breasts then pressing up to balance over me, wicked look in his eyes. "Tell me." "Tell you what?" I asked, brain nothing but sparking misfirings right then. He smiled at that, either delighted with his prowess or glad to torture me more. Or, more likely, both. I grabbed the can of whipped cream as I moved to straddle him, watching as his eyes went knowing just a second before I started making a line down his stomach with the cream, then down the little happy trail, over his balls, and then up the underside of his cock until there was a large amount on the swollen head. Then I tossed the can to the side and gave him a smile before ducking my head and starting my path down, deciding that while foreplay was always good, it was infinitely better with food involved as my tongue licked the cream off his balls then his shaft before closing my lips around the head and licking it off from there as well, making Brant let out a deep, primal groan that spurred me on, made me work him faster, deeper. "Maddy..." he warned, but I didn't need a warning. I wanted to make him come. I wanted to give him the selfless orgasm he gave me. "Fuck," he growled, his hand crushing into the back of my head as he came down my throat. I worked him for a long moment before letting him slide away, looking up at him to find an intense weight in his gaze. "From now on, we only ever eat dessert off of each other," he said a second later, his hand going under my chin and pulling me until I moved to straddle him, bringing my face close to his. "I can get behind that plan," I agreed with a smile before he yanked me forward and our lips crashed together. It wasn't a slow, sweet, post-orgasm kiss. It was still wild, hungry, primal. It said we weren't done. "Come on," he said when he pulled away, a little out of breath. "Let's go take a shower. That was hot as fuck but we're both sticky now." Thank God. I didn't want to complain, but every time I moved, my skin got stuck to his skin and it was weird and decidedly unsexy. I went to move off him, but his arms went to slip around my lower back, holding me to him as he stood and started walking around the house. Then up the stairs. I was generally not the kind of girl who got carried around. I was fit, sure, but I was tall and leggy and most guys wanted to carry around the short, lithe little women. But since Brant was a huge wall of muscle, he didn't seem bothered by my height and less than dainty limbs. He set me on my feet outside the shower and reached in to put the water on, water I knew would take a couple of minutes to warm up. But he stepped in regardless, cursing at the cold spray. "Yeah, I think not," I said when he looked at me expectantly. I should have known to step away. I really should have. But I didn't and the next thing I knew, he was yanking me in with him, making me let out a string of incredibly unladylike curses before I felt the water get warmer against my back.