“I don't have any idea what to wear anymore, so I tried to cover all bases.""Try skin.""Little chilly for that."We looked at each other across the coffee table.His eyes didn't say, I'd heat you up, and mine didn't say What are you waiting for? He didn't reply, Fuck if I'm making the first move, so I was careful not to say, I wish you would, because I can't, because I'm... and he didn't snap ...choking on your pride?!"As if you aren't.""Excuse me?""Really Barrons," I said drily. "I'm not the only one who didn't just not have that conversation, and you know it."There was the faint, sexy lift of his lip. "You're a piece of work, Ms. Lane.""Right back at you.”

“And then what? Said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, Ms. Lane, I didn't mean to wrinkle your lovely blouse. May I press that for you?' Or perhaps you gouged it with one of your pretty pink nails?"I was really beginning to wonder what his hang-up with pink was, but I didn't resent the sarcasm in his voice.”

“Stop. Vibrating." Ryodan plucks a paper out of the air and slaps it back down on his desk.I wonder if he cleans it. How many tushes have been on that thing? I'm never touching it again. "Can't help it," I say around a mouthful of candy bar. I know what I look like: a smudge of black leather and hair. "It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.""Now there's a thought," Lor says."If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again," Ryodan says."Just saying, boss," Lor says. "You can't tell me you didn't think it, too.”

“Then why was his tongue in your mouth? Was he conducting a clinical test of your gag reflex?" He smiled, but not nicely. "How is your gag reflex, Ms. Lane? Are you a hair trigger?"Barrons likes to use sexual innuendo to try to shut me up. I think he expects the well-raised southern belle in me will think eew and back off. Sometimes, I do think eew, but I don't back off. "I'm a spitter, if that's what you're asking." I flashed him a too-sweet smile."Didn't look that way to me. I think you're a swallower. His tongue was halfway to China and you were still taking it.""Jealous?”

“Figure out another way to explain me. I don’t care what you come up with. But if you call me your latest piece of petunia again or make uncalled-for references to my mouth and oral sex with you, you and I are through.”He raised a brow. “Petunia, Ms. Lane?”I scowled. “Ass, Barrons.”He crossed his arms and his gaze dropped to my glossy Lip-Venom red lips. “Am I to understand there are called-for references to your mouth and oral sex with me, Ms. Lane? I’d like to hear them.”

“I heard there are no male sidhe-seers."Where did you hear that?"Around."And which one of those are you in doubt about Ms. Lane?"Which one of what?"Whether I see the Fae, or whether I'm a man. I believe I've laid your mind to rest on the former; shall I relieve it on the latter?" He reached for his belt.Oh, please." I rolled my eyes. "You're a leftie, Barrons."Touche, Ms. Lane," he murmered.”

“I stay back, because if i get close I'll have to roll him over and look in his eyes, and what if they're empty like Alina's were ? Then I'll know he's gone, like I knew she was gone, too far beyond my reach to ever hear my voice again, to hear me say, I'm sorry, Alina. I wish I'd called more often; I wish I'd heard the truth beneath our vapid sister talk; I wish I'd come to Dublin and fought beside you, or raged at you, because you were acting from fear, too, Alina, not hope at all, or you would have trusted me to help you. Or maybe just apologize, Barrons, for being too young to have my priorities reffined, like you, because I haven't suffered whatever the hell it is you suffered, and then shove you up against a wall and kiss you until you can't breathe, do what I wanted to do the first day I saw you there in your bloody damned bookstore. Disturb you like you disturbed me, make you see me, make you want me-pink me!-shatter your self-control, bring you crashing to your knees in front of me, even though I told myself I'd never want a man like you, that you were too old, too carnal, more animal than man, with one foot in the swamp and no desire to come all the way out, when the truth was that I was terrified by what you made me feel.”