“Consciously, she thought she had her feelings for him licked; subconsciously, every time she thought about him, it was as though someone stumbling around inside her head had kicked over a bucket of electric eels.”

“How could she be feeling the very same streams that rushed around within him? She thought, as they overflowed and lapped inside her too. She had never felt the inside of another person this way.”

“She licked again, taking her time,even though she didn't need to; her first stroke numbed the bite site. No, this second taste was for her, not him, and there was no lying about that."I'm starting to feel like a Tootsie Pop, here" he rasped.She couldn't contain a smile. " Yes... how did that old commercial go?" She licked him. "One." She licked him again, and he moaned. "Two." She licked him once more, and his hips came off the bed,"Three.”

“Valek's thoughts returned to Yelena. An icy finger of loneliness touched the emptiness inside him. She was in Sitia, where she needed to be to learn about her magical powers, but she had taken his heart with her.”

“Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her.”

“For years, every conversation she had with a man had been colored by calculation. Would she put him off is she spoke her mind? What did he want her to say? When a man took a mistress, he purchased not just the rights to her body, but the content of her thoughts. Sir Mark wanted her as she was, not as he wished her to be. The thought made her head hurt.”