“She came apart, and Zeke let go, driving into her without restraint, thrilling to the cry that escaped her throat. Her body convulsed around him, a roaring filled his ears.He splintered into a billion pieces.His heart, made of thinnest glass, shattered.”

“He slid his arm under her waist, hauled her up, and entered her that way, sliding in deep, so deep, and her guttural cry was a heartbreaking pleasure.He couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t let him. She twisted her head around and kissed him, and he wanted to keep on and on, to fill her mouth, her body, her soul with him. To have her take everything and then want more.”

“Her head fell back as she cried out. She reached for him, drawing him down to her, loving the weight of him, the heaviness of him inside her, driving away memory, making the taunting vision of his fall shatter into a thousand pieces even as she herself did, again and again. Firelight gleamed, revealing and concealing the ancient poetry of possession.Flame-burnishing limbs entwined, voices cried out together, and fierce driving strength and power yielded up their tribute, there in the dark heart of the earth's tomb.”

“In that moment her heart fell out of her chest. Like the glass filled vase he had brought to her, it dropped. It was shattered into a million small pieces.”

“Her heart kicked and an itchy burning in her throat made her swallow all her saliva away. She didn't know which way to go.”

“She cried then, letting the raw emotions overtake her. She cried for the loss of her youth that bled out on a bathroom floor many years ago. She cried for the fairytale shattered by an exploding gun. She cried for all of the things she could not tell him, the regret, the fear of a future marked by desperation for things she could never have. She cried for the babies she would never bear. She pleaded for God to take away her memories of him, but they came one by one, spilling into the forefront of her mind, vivid as the moment they had just happened. And she was seventeen all over again, lying beside him in his warm bed, and had just loved him, was drunk with the love he had poured into her.”