“What you’re seeing is pain. And you’re the only one who sees it,” he said more softly. “You’re the only one who can cut me, and you wound me deep.”

“Are you saying that was real magic?" I said. "That's crazy." "Well, let's see. Are you telling me you just saw the past in a vision. That a monkey in a top hat was trying to murder my chief costumer and head accountant with the most powerful poison in existence using her makeup jar? If so, perhaps I'm not the crazy one here.”

“He was gazing down at me, and his eyes were endless, deep pools of pleading and fire and barely restrained something or other, and they were magnetic, like black holes, but full of flames, and yet gray, and yet full of colors and see-through and dancing with little flecks of glitter, and I couldn’t look away, and what pretty eyelashes he had, as long and dark as a woman’s, as a kitten’s, as a panther’s, and the smell, oh, the smell, like crushed heather and berries and springtime in the morning and bodies rolling over and over in the grass and everything covered with dew like cobwebs making mandalas of raindrops, and I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t hold back for one more second...”

“He was watching me, and he chuckled. "Do you know how a man tames a wolf?" he asked me."No," I said."You get some clothing that you've been wearing for a while, and you toss it in with her. In the cage or the cavern where she sleeps. That first one, she rips up, shreds it to nothing. The second one, she just mouths it a bit, gets a taste. Inhales, like you're doing there. The third but of clothing, she starts dragging it around, loving on it, sleeping with it. And then you've got her under your spell. She's got the scent of you, wants to keep it around. She'll follow you everywhere.""Are you calling me a wolf?" I asked."Are you calling me a man?" he said.”

“He was an animal. He was terrifying. And he was beautiful. I realized that I was biting my lip, that my hand was wound into the ruffled fabric at my chest. Something in me was drawn to the carnage. Like so many women before me, I was a slave to the caveman brain, that deep old part of my DNA that whispered that ferocity would keep me safe and fed and alive and that I should most definitely find the fiercest creature around and hump it.”

“Let me guess. You think we’re going to live happily ever after, like some stupid fairy tale?”“Why not?” His stare dared me to laugh or, worse, to argue.“Because the whole thing is ridiculous,” I said. I despised the bitterness in my own voice. I sounded so damaged. Good. If he thought I was his soul mate for some mysterious reason he wouldn’t let on, let him see the worst of me.“It’s not ridiculous to me. Perhaps that’s the difference between predators and prey, love. I’ll never stop hunting. But I expect that one day, you’ll stop running.”“Because I want to die?”“Because you want to live.”

“I'm a nurse," I said, feeling huffy. "I help sick people." "So you can stop the diseases?" he asked. "Not really. I mostly help the people who are already dying, trying to make their last days comfortable." "You help people die," he mused. "That sounds quite sinister, and that's coming from someone who drinks blood.”