“Especially as Blay’s face came to mind. So beautiful. So very, very beautiful. It seemed silly and emasculating to call the guy that, but he was. Those damn lips were the problem … nice and cushioned on the bottom. Or maybe the eyes? So fucking blue.He’d kissed that mouth and loved it. Seen those eyes go wild. He could have had Blay first—and only. But instead? His cousin …“Oh, God …” he groaned.”

“You are so beautiful, he mouthed. But of course she couldn’t see his lips. Guess he was going to have to show her.”

“Saxton smelled really good and had a handshake that was firm. "You've grown up a lot."Blay found himself flushing as he took his hand back. "You're just the same." "Am I?" Those pearl eyes flashed. "Is that good or bad?" "Oh...good. I didn't mean---" "So tell me how you've been. Are you mated to some nice female your parents set you up with?"Blay's laugh was sharp and hard. "God, no. There's no one for me.”

“As that fucking chandelier twinkled overhead, Blay said roughly, "I'm still in love with him."Saxton dropped his eyes and brushed a the top of his thigh, as if there might have been a tiny piece of lint there. "I know. You thought you weren't?"As if that were rather stupid of him."I'm so fucking tired of it. I really am.""That I believe.""Im so fucking..." God, those sounds, that muted pounding , that audible confirmation of what he had been ignoring for the past year--On a sudden wave of violence, he pitched the brandy snifter at the marble fireplace, shattering the thing."Fuck, Fuck!" If he'd been able to, he'd have jumped up and torn that goddamn cocksucking light fixture off the goddamn cocksucking ceiling.”

“Abruptly, Blay's blue stare found his.And what Qhuinn saw in it caused him to falter: Love shone out of that face, unadulterated love untempered by the shyness that was very much part of his reserve.Blay didn't look away.And for the first time ... neither did Qhuinn. He didn't know whether the emotion was for his cousin—it probably was-but he'd take it: He stared right back at Blaylock and let everything he had in his heart show in his face.He just let that shit fly.Because there was a lesson in this Fade ceremony tonight: You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye-and he was willing to bet when it happened, you weren't thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart.You thought of all the reasons that kept you together.”

“As Qhuinn looked at his best friend's handsome face, he felt as if he'd never not known that red hair, those blue eyes, those lips, that jaw. And it was because of their long history that he searched for something to say, something that would get them back to where they had been. All that came to him was . . . I miss you. I miss you so fucking bad it hurts, but I don't know how to find you even though you're right in front of me.”

“Closing his eyes, he made it about fifteen minutes before his tossing and turning rode those pj bottoms so far up his crotch he felt like he could cough flannel.If he was doing the mattress and pillow thing, he usually slept naked and now he knew why.This was f'in ridiculous.”