“Luna was remote and ladylike. The only time anyone had ever seen Luna angry was when someone referred to her as 'African-American'."I'm an American," she had snapped, whirling on the offender. "I've never even been to Africa. I was born in California, my father was a major in the Marine Corps, and I'm not a hyphenated anything. I have a black heritage, but I also have a white one." She had held out one slim arm and studied the color of it. "Looks to me like I'm brown. We're all just different shades of brown,so don't try to set me apart.”

“He whirled her against the refrigerator, his hands hard on her waist. Startled, she dropped her purse and keys to the floor and looked up at his set face and narrowed savage eyes. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said with clenched teeth.She didn’t have to ask what he meant. Those moments when Pavón’s pistol had been trained directly at her head had been long and terrifying.“I stayed in the—” she began, but he cut her off with a kiss that was wild and hungry and deep. He lifted her onto her toes and pressed in hard against her, grinding his erection into the softness of her mound.She yielded immediately to that outraged male aggression, wrapping her arms around him and transforming it into sheer lust.”

“She started to tell him so, but the words vanishedunsaid when he abruptly thrust his hands under her skirt, all the way to her waist. Marygave a startled shriek and jerked back, almost oversetting the chair. He glared at her, hiseyes like black ice."You don't have to worry," he snapped. "This is Saturday. I only rape on Tuesdays andThursdays.”

“By morning, she was raw and sore, and knew walking would be an effort. By morning, she could barely remember what it had been like to not know his body, not to have felt him inside her and held him in her arms and absorbed the power of his thrusts as he came.By morning, she was his.”

“He lifted the arm covering his eyes and turned his head to glare at her. "I knew you were trouble the first time I saw you.""What do you mean, trouble?" She sat up, glaring back at him. "I am not trouble! I'm a very nice person except when I have to deal with jerks!""You're the worst kind of trouble," he snapped. "You're marrying trouble.”

“She had no sense of time, of what day it was, or anything beyond the bed she was on and the unceasing battle she fought with the Great Bitch of Pain.The nurses talked to her, too, explaining over and over what had happened to her, what they were doing, why they were doing it. She didn‟t care, so long as they delivered the drugs that kept the Great Bitch at bay. Of course, there came a time—way too soon, by her way of thinking— when her surgeon ordered a decrease in the drugs. He wasn‟t the one in agony, with his sternum cut in two, so what did he care? He was the one wielding the saw and scalpel, not the one on the receiving end. She had only a vague idea which of her visitors was the surgeon, but as her mind began clearing she memorized some particularly salty things she wanted to say to him. Okay, so he'd had to cut her sternum in half, but cutting her drugs in half? Bastard.”

“You know, I have to tell you"--I tried to make my voice bright to lighten the moo--"this ring of yours has got to be the ugliest thing I have ever seen.""I'm insulted." He held his hand up to the moonlight and straightened the monstrosity on his finger. "My dad gave this to me when we moved to Michigan.'To remember the old life' he said. I've never taken it off. I look at it and see California.""Remind me never to visit California.”