“Laya! I'm going to give you my baby. You hear me?”

“Don't you know you take my heart with you everywhere you go?”

“I am going to devour you, Magdelegna,” he promised her, the darkness of his cravings coming to bear on her fully at last. “You wanted to know my passions? Allow me to introduce them to you.”

“Now, here I am, a stranded woman marching down a spooky, remote road with no one to hear me scream. I'm in a damned plot for B horror flick!”

“You are my heart as it beats within my chest, my soul as it moves through my mind. The breath in my body that so fascinates you is your essence pouring in and out of me in a wave that drowns me over and over again until I cannot breathe for wanting you. Needing you.”

“But I must tell you that..." he paused and his voice filled with infinite gentleness and tenderness. "You are so very precious to me," he whispered against her neck. "You are my heart as it moves within my chest, my soul as it moves through my mind. The breath in my body that so fascinates you is your essence pouring in and out of me in a wave that drowns me over and over again until I cannot breathe for wanting you. Needing you.”

“I find it odd that you would voice such an unnecessary question,” Gideon remarked serenely, sipping his beverage and rolling the bouquet of it over his tongue for a moment. "at times I find comfort in voicing a concern just to hear the verbal assurance.”