“I've never before met anyone whose outside so matched their soul. You could drill clean through Didier and find nothing but layer upon layer of beauty, dark and strange and kind and prurient, but all of it perfectly, utterly pure.”

“And I realized something I never had before. Deep down, I want to be seen as an object too. I want to be coveted and sought after. I want to be taken apart and understood, reassembled, filed away in Didier's cabinet. I don't even need to be pretty to have this. I only have to allow him to open me up.”

“Let's quit our jobs and fuck all day.""Works for me. Think somebody will subsidize that? Maybe we could apply for some kind of research grant," she said.”

“A beautiful young clerk might flirt with him as he browsed, but she'd never see what I did. She'd see only his shiny shell, snapped shut to hide a jumble of secondhand parts, ticking not quite as they should, but ticking nonetheless. A bit rusty. A bit erratic, like my heartbeat in the moments before I press his buzzer.”

“Shane knew this wasn't love, at least not any kind of love that extended beyond the desires of two selfish bodies. No future, only fleeting pleasure. This was addiction, plain and simple...irresistible need coupled with painful consequences and regret, moments of pure happiness like islands, spread out in a thrashing sea of insecurity and interminable waiting.”

“You taste so fucking amazing.” He brought his head up and Laurel could see the violent rise and fall of his chest. “Sit on my face,” he said.”

“I’m gonna fall in love with you,” Kelly said. His words hung in the darkness, bright as candle flames.”