Karen Marie Moning

“How will we get back up?" I worried."I have a different route in mind for our return trip.""Does it involve stairs?" I asked hopefully."No.""Of course not. How silly of me. And for our return adventure we will be scaling the side of Mount Everest, hiking boots to be provided by our trusty sponsor, Barrons Books and Baubles.”

“What the bloody hell are you, Ms. Lane?”

“What are you?"A man with a rope?""Ha-ha.”

“Okay, Barrons, it's time.""I am not helping you shave your legs." he said instantly. "Oh please. As if I'd let you.”

“Mac." He said my name and laughed. "What a name for something like you. Mac.”

“What is the greater good but tyranny’s chameleon?”

“Barrons laughed again. "And there, my dear Fio, you make one of Womankind's greatest mistakes: Falling in love with a man's potential. We so rarely share the same view of it, and even more rarely care to achieve it. Stop pining for the man you think I could be -- and take a good, long, hard look at the one I am.”

“What is trust, sidhe-seer, but expectation that another will behave in a certain fashion, consistent with prior actions?”

“Lose the pessimism, Ms. Lane. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Being touched by Jericho Barrons with kindness makes you feel like you the biggest, most savage lion in the jungle, lying down, placing yourhead it its mouth and, rather than taking your life, it licks you andpurrs.”

“Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle. Daddy told me once - when I'd said something about how perfect his relationship with Mom was - that I should have seen the first five years of their marriage, that they'd fought like hellions, crashed into each other like two giant stones. That eventually they'd eroded each other into the perfect fit, become a single wall, nestled into each other's curves and hollows, her strengths chinking his weaknesses, her weaknesses reinforced by his strengths.”

“Have you ever had one of those moments when time just freezes? Youknow, when the world suddenly goes deathly still, and you could hear apin drop, and the squishing sound your heart makes is so loud in yourears you feel like youre drowning in blood, and you stand there in thatsuspended moment and die a thousand deaths, but not really, and themoment passes and dumps you out on the other side of it, with yourmouth hanging open, and an erased blackboard where your mind used tobe?”

“I get off on a man with strong moral fiber. The closest Barrons ever gets to fiber is walking down the cereal aisle at the grocery store.”

“Born in a generation that thinks cynical and disenchanted is cool,sometimes I'm a little off the beaten track.”

“We're taking back the night”

“Oh ye of little faith. Not for IYD... But you didn't even try.”

“And you can tell Darroc that Ms. Lane is mine. If he wants her, he can bloody well come and get her”

“You hated my rainbows, now you don't like my leather. Is there anything you like on me?”

“You're leaving me, Rainbow Girl.”

“The kind of person that thanks another person never survives. Have you learned nothing?”

“I'm sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody's does, and you go on. It's how you go on that defines you.”

“If I entered a tropical beach, would I end up in Nazi Germany with my highly inconvenient black hair?”

“Our sex is fierce. We will both be bruised. "I want it to always be like this," I tell him. "Try holding onto that thought." "I do not need to try. I will never feel differently." His laughter is as dark and cold as the place of which I dream, "One day you will wonder if it's possible to hate me more.”

“I am going to love you now, slow and sweet, but when you come, I'm going to f*** you the way I need to. The way I've been dreaming about since the moment I saw you.”

“I want us to be... what is your word? Friends.""Psychotic rapists don't have friends.""I was unaware you were a psychotic rapists or I would not have offered."(Mac & V'lane)”

“No wonder Barrons was so determined to keep me alive, and I had a Fae prince playing lapdog, and the Lord Master hadn't yet launched a full scale attack against me. They all needed me alive. I was Tigger. I was the only one.”

“There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.”

“Just one time....When you know who I am. Let me be your man." ~ JZB”

“You will wear the féth fiada until this is done, Amadan.” “Bloody hell,” Adam muttered savagely. “I hate being invisible.”“And Keltar,” Aoibheal said in a voice like sudden thunder, with a glance up at the balustrade. “Henceforth I would advise against tampering with my curses. Perform the Lughnassadh ritual now or face my wrath.”“Aye, Queen Aoibheal,” Dageus and Drustan replied together, stepping our from behind stone columns bracketing the stairs.Adam smiled faintly. He should have known no Highlander would flee, only retreat to a higher vantage – take to the hills, in a manner of speaking – waiting in silent readiness should battle be necessary.”

“Holy cow,” Chloe said faintly.“No kidding,” Gwen breathed.The sexy Fae prince flashed them a smile that was pure devilish charm, sexy and playful and mischievous, briefly catching the tip of his tongue between white teeth, before his lip curved, dark eyes sparkling gold.Gabby groaned. She choked on it hastily, camouflaging it with a dry little cough. Her own private stash of eye candy had just been made available for public consumption and she didn’t like it one bit. Apparently she wasn’t the only one.“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Dageus?” Drustan said irritably.“Och, aye,” Dageus said darkly. “You liked him better invisible too?”“Och, aye.”“Should I curse him again?”“Och, aye.”Adam threw back his head and laughed, eyes sparkling with gold fire. “Bloody hell, it’s good to be back,” he purred.”

“Tell them, Gabrielle,” Adam urged impatiently.Blinking, Gabby nodded. “I have one of the, er… fairies here with me –”“Tuatha Dé,” Adam corrected irritably. “You’re bloody well making me sound like Tinkerbell.”

“That is not my car!”“Correction. You used to drive a falling apart Toyota. B.A.”Had his lips just brushed her hair? She shivered. And though she knew better than to ask, she did it anyway.“Okay. You got me. What’s B.A.?”“Before. Adam. After Adam, you drive a BMW. I take care of what is mine. That Toyota wasn’t safe.”Figured that arrogant beast would define himself as the dawning of an epoch.“I’m not yours. It was too, and you can’t just go around stealing.”“I didn’t, and I filled out the paperwork myself.”

“As she lifted the glittering strand of diamonds from the box, a small slip of paper fell out. She caught it as it wafted toward the floor. Four words in ancient script, an arrogantly slanted scrawl.Accept these, accept me.Well, she thought, blinking, that wascertainly direct and to the point.-Adam's note to Gabrielle”

“Valhalla on the right. Paradise regained on the left. Stuck between a Godiva truffle and a chocolate eclair. Between a rock and a very hard place. Two very hard places from the looks of it.”

“ I would not have believed it, either. No human has ever come back from being made Pri-ya, and, although I am pleased that you have recovered from what was done to you, I am not pleased that I must now compete for you with no glamour, without the glory of my birthright. They were Unseelie, MacKayla, the foulest of the foul, the darkest of my race, the abominations. I am Seelie, and we are vastly different. I had hoped that one day, when you trusted me, you would let me share with you the ecstasy of being one like me. With no pain, MacKayla, and no price. Now that can never be. You have no idea how exquisite the experience might have been and now never will. ”

“ His voice worked on me like an aphrodisiac. I was wet and ready. I had been since he began speaking. For two months, I'd been trapped in a Fae-induced sexual frenzy, having constant, incredible sex with him, while listening to his voice, smelling his scent. Like one of Pavlov's dogs, I'd been conditioned by repeated stimuli to have a guaranteed response. My body anticipated, greedily expected pleasure in his presence. I inhaled, caught myself straining for the scent of him, forced it back out, and closed my eyes, as if maybe I could hide behind my own lids from an ironic truth : V'lane and Barrons had swapped roles. I was no longer sexually vulnerable to the death-by-sex Fae Prince.Jericho Barrons was my poison now. ”

“He misinterpreted it. "It is a gift," he said stiffly.Wounded, proud prince. I touched his face. He'd given me my mom and dad, my whole town, the entire state of Georgia back. "I was shaking my head at something I was thinking, not your words. Yes, I'd like to have your name, V'lane."He gave me that brilliant smile again, then his mouth was on mine. This time, when he kissed me, the unpronounceable Fae name slid sweeter than tupelo honey across my tongue and pooled there, warm and delicious, filling my mouth with a feast of taste and sensation beyond description before melting into the meat of it. Unlike the other times he's implanted his name in my tongue, it felt natural, unobtrusive. Also unlike those times, I wasn't battered by an erotic attack, forced into orgasm by his touch. It was an extraordinary kiss, but it invited without invading, gave without taking.He drew back. "We are learning from each other," he said. "I begin to understand Adam."I blinked. "The first man ? You know about Adam and Eve ?" V'lane didn't seem the kind to study human creation myths."No. One of my race that chose to become human," he clarified. "Ah, Barrons comes growling." He gave the startling equivalent of a human snicker and was gone. I reached instinctively for my spear. It was back in the holster. I frowned. I'd forgotten to check. Had it ever been gone ?I turned. "Growling" was a mild word for it. Barrons stood in the doorway, and if looks could kill, I'd have been flayed alive in the street.”

“The battle had been invisible to the naked eye, but the hardest ones are.”

“Irony, perfect definition: that for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want once I possessed it.”

“You will hold me and we will live. Dance. Fuck. Feast. It will be grand. We will K'Vruck the world." "I'm not holding you. Ever." "You were made for me. I for you. Two for tea and t-t-tea for two.”

“Who would ever understand me?”

“When Barrons looks at me like that, it rattles me. Lust, in those ancient, obsidian eyes, offers no trace of humanity. Doesn’t even bother trying. Savage Mac wants to invite it to come out and play. I think she’s nuts. Nuts, I tell you.”

“An ait a bhfuil do chroi is ann a thabharfas do chosa thu.(your feet will bring you to where your heart is.)”

“Every time I think I’m getting smarter I realize that I’ve just done something stupid. Dad says there are three kinds of people in the world: those who don’t know, and don’t know they don’t know; those who don’t know and do know they don’t know; and those who know and know how much they still don’t know.Heavy stuff, I know. I think I’ve finally graduated from the don’t-knows that don’t know to the don’t-knowsthat do.”

“He raised a brow. 'Petunia, Ms. Lane?'I scowled. "Ass, Barrons.”

“I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style,park your own car out front. My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with. Case in point, those darned Harry Potter movies. That was so not what that part-Veela-chick, Fleur Delacour, looked like.”

“Home, Ms. Lane?” His deep voice was gently amused.“I have to call it something,” I said morosely. “They say home is where the heart is. I think mine’s satin-linedand six feet under.”

“Burns from dropped matches, Ms. Lane? Matches one might have dropped while flirting with a perniciousFae, Ms. Lane? Have you any idea the value of this rug?”I didn’t think his nostrils could flare any wider. His eyes were black flame. “Pernicious? Good grief, is Englishyour second language? Third?” Only someone who’d learned English from a dictionary would use such a word.“Fifth,” he snarled. “Answer me.”

“There are three floors beneath the garage? Why on earth?"-Mac”

“Last night you said you wanted to know what to expect so you could better select your attire. I told you we were going to visit a vampire in a Goth-den tonight. Why, then, Ms. Lane, do you look like a perky rainbow?”