“Hearing that I'd come so close to dying should've terrified me, but all I could muster up was a weary "This day sucks.”

“I'd address his way of trying to discourage Ian later. After all, he could have come up with something other than saying I was a whiny, smelly, trumpet-snoring bad lay.”

“How could you be nervous about asking me to marry you, Bones? I'd die for you. Why wouldn't I want to live for you as well?”

“You know what your problem is, Justina? You're in desperate need of a good shag. "Not that I'm offering you one myself, mind. My days as a whore ended back in the seventeen hundreds." The gin was abruptly sucked back into my lungs as I gasped. He did not just tell my mother about his former profession; sweet Jesus, let me have heard incorrectly!I hadn't, and Bones went right on. "... But I have a friend who owes me a favor and he could be persuaded to... Kitten, are you all right?" I'd stopped breathing as soon as he casually admitted to his prior occupation. Add that to the liquid stuck in my lungs, and no, I wasn't all right.”

“Now that's worth the trip right there." He chuckled, pink starting to sparkle in his eyes. "How goes it, Gregor? Forgot your manners, did you? If I'd known you were balanced in such a precarious state, I might have taken even...longer."I'd yanked a sheet between us and made Gregor pick up his hips, but the rest of him stayed where it was so I could keept that knife close to his heart. It left Gregor with his ass sticking up in the air while his face stayed level with mine. I wasn't trying to be funny. Only practical.”

“Did you really think I'd ceased to care? Kitten, I care so much it wrecks me.”

“This wasn't the first time I'd woken up as a captive. It wasn't even the second. I so needed to reevaluate my life choices.”