Karen Marie Moning

“And then what? Said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, Ms. Lane, I didn't mean to wrinkle your lovely blouse. May I press that for you?' Or perhaps you gouged it with one of your pretty pink nails?"I was really beginning to wonder what his hang-up with pink was, but I didn't resent the sarcasm in his voice.”

“Dubh is do?" I was incredulous. It was no wonder I hadn't been able to find the stupid word. "Should I becalling pubs poos?""Dubh is Gaelic, Ms. Lane. Pub is not.”

“When he kisses me again, the last part of me that could stand myself dies.”

“Open your eyes and say my name.”I squeeze them shut more tightly.“It would make my cock hard to hear you say my name.”My eyes pop open. “Jericho Barrons,” I say sweetly.He makes a pained sound. “Bloody hell, woman, I think a part of me wants to keep you this way.”I touch his face. “I like how I am. I like how you are, too. When you are…What is that word you used? Cooperating.”“Tell me to fuck you.”I smile and comply. We’re back in territory I understand.“You didn’t say my name. Say my name when you tell me to fuck you.”“Fuck me, Jerricho Barrons.”“From now on, you will call me Jericho Barrons every time you speak to me.”

“I am a kite in a tornado, but I have a long string. ”

“Silence isn't golden, it's deadly. It's a vacuum that fills up with ghosts.”

“Safety is a fence, and fences are for sheep.”

“Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain...Try living for someone. Through it all-good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That's the hard thing.”

“There’s only one question that matters, Ms. Lane, and it’s the one you never get around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It’s the truth you can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die. Prove yourself. How much truth can you take, Ms. Lane?”

“He lives. I breathe. I want. Him. Always. Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever. -Mac”

“He is in my soul and i am in his, and we are in bed but we are in a desert, and i do not know where he begins and i end - Mac”

“You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that? - JZB”

“Naught will be done to you that you doona wish done. Dageus MacKeltar”

“I'd never been turned on by the Ken doll—even before I looked down his pants and saw what was missing.”

“It's what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are.”

“But it seems Ive got this set of scales inside me that I never used to have, or at least I wasnt aware of, and I cant shake the feeling that if I dont try to keep them balanced, Ill lose something I wont be able to get back.”

“I wasn't prepared for death. Nobody is. You lose someone you love more than you love yourself, and you get a crash course in mortality. You lie awake night after night, wondering if you really believe in heaven and hell and finding all kinds of reasons to cling to faith, because you can't bear to believe they aren't out there somewhere, a few whispered words of a prayer away.”

“We're translating the Kama Sutra," Barrons said, with interactive aids.”

“The four Keltar Druids brought their wives and children. They breed like it's their personal mission to populate their country in case somebody attacks again, as if anybody wants the bloody place.”

“He looked blank. “He’s the one who’s been doing the magic against us?”“Duh,” I said.“Doona be ‘duh’ing me, lass,” he growled, his burr thickening.”

“If V’lane were a signpost, it would read Abandon All Personal Will, Ye Who Tread Here.”

“What the feck?” Dani snapped when I answered. “You sleep like the fecking dead up there! I been calling you for five fecking minutes!”

“I was nothing if not determined; at least twice a week I would wear bright, pretty clothes. I was afraid if I didn’t, I’d forget who I was. I’d turn into what I felt like: a grungy, weapon-bearing, pissy, resentful vengeance-hungry bitch.”

“I must be dreaming. Bring that sweet ass over here and I'll show you what God made women and well-hung Scotsmen for.”

“She's my baby girl, Quinn. I want love for her. Real love. The kind that makes a man crazy inside.-Gibraltar to Quinn”

“When my faith is getting weakAnd I feel like giving inYou breathe into me again…”

“The good guys and bad guys aren’t as easy to tell apart as I used to think they were. You can’t look at someone with your eyes and take their measure.You have to look with the heart.”

“The real thinkers of the world aren't the best dressed. Staying on top of the latest fashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that- ask yourself what they're running from.”

“If I'm a little girl, then that makes you a serious pervert.”

“The paranoid one's wards are still active. They keep me several feet from the building.""But not his car," I said, a smile tugging at my lips. Barrons would go nuts if he knew that V'lane had touched his Viper. And stretched out on it nude? He'd have an aneurysm.”

“Stop staring at my dick," he growled.Oh, yes it was definitely an illusion. "Barrons loved me staring at his dick,"I informed it. "he would have been happy if I'd stared at his dick all day long, composing odes to its perfection.”

“Mac reflected on the Unseelie King and his concubine:He’d loved her for all timeAfter he’d believed she was goneSunshine to his ice.Frost to her fever. I wished them forever.You, too, beautiful girl. The Unseelie King was gone.”

“Liminal sucks. You can't grasp it with your hands and shape it. You can't make midnight come faster, or grow up sooner, or avoid the in-betweens. You can only hang in there, and get through them.”

“Although it may not seem like it, this isn’t a story about darkness. It’s about light. Kahlil Gibran says Your joy can fill you only as deeply your sorrow has carved you. If you’ve never tasted bitterness, sweet is just another pleasant flavor on your tongue. One day I’m going to hold a lot of joy.”

“He strips his shirt over his head and I catch my breath, watching those long hard muscles ripple. I know how his shoulders look, bunched, when he's on top of me, how his face gets tight with lust, as he eases inside me. "Who am I?""Jericho""Who are you?" He kicks off his boots, steps out of his pants. He's commando tonight.My breath whooshes out of me in a run-on word: "Whogivesafuck?”

“You're Mac, and I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters.”

“Was he a good kisser, Ms. Lane?” Barrons asked, watching me carefully.I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand at the memory. “It was like being owned.”Some women like that.”Not me.”Perhaps it depends on the man doing the owning.”I doubt it. I couldn’t breathe with him kissing me.”One day you may kiss a man you can’t breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.”Right, and one day my prince might come.”I doubt he’ll be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.”

“So how did he look at me?""Like it was his birthday and you were the cake.”

“His heavy-lidded gaze reflected a languor that had nothing to do with having just awakened, and there was no doubt what was on his mind. But this is no safe cherry picker, Gwen thought, growing more concerned by the moment.This man looks like a cherry tree chopper-downer.”

“Had he stood outside my door as I'd stood outside his, fists at his sides, lips drawn back? Did it have him as bad as it had me? Was it eating at him, gnawing at him with the same sharp vicious little teeth that wouldn't let me sleep? Yes, it was. I could see the rage of insatiable uninvited lust in every line of that dark, stoic face that had once been too subtly etched for me to read. I wasn't the only one lying awake at night, fevered with memories, tossing, turning, soaking my sheets, burning up--not for Fae sex, but him, damn it all to hell, him.”

“I hate fate. I don’t believe in her. Unfortunately, I think the bitch believes in me.”

“Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again. 'Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,' he agrees.”

“Those who were so long imprisoned in ice and darkness seem to find the sunlight jarring, painful. The longer I walk around with this grief inside me, the more I understand that. It’s as if sunshine is a slap in the face that says, Look, the world’s all bright and shiny! Too bad you’re not.”

“He makes a pained sound. "Bloody hell, woman, I think a part of me wants to keep you this way.”

“I am the man you've needed all you life. I can give you whatever you wish before you even realize you are wishing for it. I can fill your every longing , heal your every wound, right your every wrong. You have enemies? Not with me at your side. You have hunger? I will find the most succulent, ripe morsel and feed you with my bare hands. You have pain? I will ease it. Bad dreams? I will chase them asunder. Regrets? I will go back and undo them. Command me, Beauty, and I am yours. -Adam Black”

“Bedevil the devil and devil be dammed. I fear no devil and bow to no man.- Adam Black”

“God Said: Let there be light!I said: Say please.”

“I have a black sense of humor. You try living my life, see what color yours turns.”

“Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.They make you feel so alive that you'd follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.”

“Oooh! Stop that. When you smile at me I want all of it.""What?" He looked confused”