“She should feel sick. Horrified, stunned. But the horrible truth was, she felt fine. He killed. He killed to protect her. And someancient, atavistic streak inside her wanted to preen and purr. She was one sick puppy.”

“Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.”

“Ella knew she should be horrified. Zane had killed someone for just touching her. But, and she might burn in hell for thinking this, she thought it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. In a perverted way, she also found it romantic. She finally had someone who wanted to protect her. My very own vampire in dark armor.”

“He wanted to see her eat. After the sex, after he came inside her, he wanted to have her eat food he'd bought her, and he wanted her to take the stuff from his hand. Hell, he wanted to go out and kill something for her, bring the meat back, cook it himself, and feed her until she was full. Then he wanted to lie beside her with a dagger in his hand, protecting her as she slept.”

“Her rage flopped awkwardly away like a duck. She felt as she had when her cold, fierce parents had at last grown sick and old, stick-boned and saggy, protected by infirmity the way cuteness protected a baby, or should, it should protect a baby, and she had been left with her rage--vestigial, girlhood rage--inappropriate and intact. She would hug her parents good-bye, the gentle, emptied sacks of them, and think Where did you go?”

“He was so fucking in love with her that he felt sick and empty when she wasn’t around and so unbelievably happy when he saw her that he couldn’t believe his own stupidity”