“There is something of yours I would like to return to you.""What?"He leaned across the distance between them and caught her mouth with his own. Her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted easily as she felt the kiss sizzling through her nerves, rendering her thoughts to smoke."Um..." Kaye stepped make, a little unsteadily. "Why does that belong to me?""That was the kiss I stole from you when you were enchanted," he said patiently."Oh...well, what if I didn't want it?""You don't?"No," she said, letting a grin spread across her face, hoping her mother would take her time of the drive over. "I'd like you to take it back again, please.""I am your servant," the King of the Unseelie Court said, his lips a moment from her own, "Consider it done.”

“There is something of yours that i would like to return to you . . . He leaned across the distance between them and caught her mouth with his own.”

“You didn't think I really liked you? Do you think I really like you now?"He turned toward her, uncertainty in his face."You did go quite a lot of effort to be having this conversation, but... I don't want to read too much of what I hope into that."Val stretched out beside him, resting her head in the crook of his arm. "What do you hope?"He pulled her close, hands careful not to touch her wounds as they wrapped around her. "I hope that you feel for me as I do for you," he said, his voice like a sigh against her throat.And how is that?" she asked, her lips so close to his jaw that she could taste the salt of his skin when she moved them.You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that."She smiled and let her eyes drift closed. They lay there together, under the bridge, city lights burning outside the windows like a sky full of falling stars, as they slid off into sleep”

“You're not the way everyone says you are," Kaye said, looking at him so fiercely that he couldn't meet her gaze. "I know you're not.""You know nothing of me," he said. He wanted to punish her for the trust he saw on her face, to raze it from her now so that he would be spared the sight of her when that trust was betrayed.He wanted to tell her he found her impossibly alluring, at least half enchanted, body bruised and scratched, utterly unaware she would not live past dawn. He wondered what she would say in the face of that.”

“So, what did you think of the Unseelie Court?"A slow, wicked smile spread on his face. "Oh, Kaye," he breathed. "It was marvelous. It was perfect."She narrowed her gaze. "I was joking. They were killing things, Corny. For fun. Things like us."He didn't seem to hear her, his eyes looking past her to the bright window. "There was this knight, not yours. He ... " Corny shivered and seemed to abruptly change the direction of his sentence. "He had a cloak all lined with thorns.""I saw him talking to the Queen," Kaye said.Corny shrugged off his jacket. There were long scratches along his arms."What happened to you?"Corny's smile widened, but his gaze was locked in some memory. He shifted it back to her. "Well, obviously I got inside the cloak."She snorted. "What a euphemism.”

“Startled, he loosed his grasp and she pulled free. He clutched her arm, but she spun around and pressed her mouth to his. His lips were rough, chapped. She felt the sting of fangs against her bottom lip. He made a sharp sound in the back of his throat and closed his eyes. Mouth opening under hers. The smell of him- of cold, damp stone- made her head swim. One kiss slid into another and it was perfect, was exactly right, was real.”

“His words were still clear in her mind from that first meeting. "Whoever eats this will love you." She looked into the mirror, at her birthmark, bright as blood, at her kiss-stung lips, at the absurd smile stretching across her face.Carefully separating out the crushed pieces of shell, she pulled the dried pulp free from its cage of veins. Piece by piece, she put the sweet brown fruit in her own mouth and swallowed it down.”