“If ‘just’ is all you can give me now, then ‘just’ is what we’ll do.”

“Do you understand what I’m offering you?""Do you understand that it’s not 1815?""It’s not unusual for Masters to have Consorts.""Yes, and your current Consort’s in my kitchen right now. If you need . . . relieving, talk to her.""As much as it pains me to say it, Amber isn’t you.""I don’t even know what that means. Should I—What? Be flattered that while you don’t like me, you’re willing to sacrifice just to get into my pants?”

“Do you ever wish that sometimes the world would just stop spinning for a few hours to give you a chance to catch up?”

“It's either food or blood, Ethan.And given thats it's just me and you in this car right now, food would be considerably less complicated, don't you think?”

“You’re quiet this evening,” he said. I pasted on a pleasant smile. “It’s been a long week. I’m just trying to relax.” And I was trying to avoid more drama. He was quiet for two or three minutes, during which the two of us stood there together, black-clad vampires moving around us. “I can tell something’s bothering—”We had sex and you bailed, I silently thought, and now your contrition is driving me crazy. “I was just enjoying the music.”

“We all have days when we feel small. Really small. Completely inadequate but saddled with all this responsibility...I have to fight battles against people who shouldn't be my enemies - especially when there are allready plenty of enemies to go around. There are days when I would love to pull the cover over my head and say to hell with it.But I don't do that. And most people don't do that. Most people get up and do their jobs and work their asses off for no reward at all - but just so they can get up the next day and do the whole thing over again. World isn't perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules are too tough and they shouldn't apply to you, and you can ignore them and make things harder for everybody else. Sometimes life is about being sad and doing things anyway. Sometimes it's about being hurt and doing things anyway. The point isn't perfection. The point is doing it anyway.”

“You're perfect- beautiful, intelligent, intractable in a kind of... attractive way. Headstrong, but a good strategist. An amazing fighter.""But that's not enough?""It's too much. You think I haven't thought about what it might be like to return to my rooms at the end of the night and find you there- to find you in my bed, to have your body and your laugh and your mind? To look across a room and know that you were mine- that *I'd* claimed you. *Me.* Ethan Sullivan. Not the four-hundred-year-old vampire, not the child of Balthasar or the Novitiate of Peter Cadogan. Me. Just me. Just you and me.”