“When my faith is getting weakAnd I feel like giving inYou breathe into me again…”

“Nobody's perfect for battling evil. It's seductive. When we find it, it's going to come at you with everything it's got." I was braced for it. I knew it would. I took a deep, slow breath, filling my lungs, squaring my shoulders. "Jericho, I feel like my whole life have been pushing me toward this moment." "That's it. Fate's a fickle whore. We're not going. Take your clothes off and get back in my bed.”

“I think I’m under control, that I’ve stripped away all weaknesses. That committing to my mission has made me impervious. I’m wrong. The thought of Barrons smiling brings other thoughts.Barrons naked.Dancing.Dark head thrown back.Laughing.The image doesn’t “gently swim up in my mind” in a dreamy sort of way, like I’ve seen in movies. No, this one slams into my head like a nuclear missile, exploding in my brain in graphic detail. I suffocate in a mushroom cloud of pain.I can’t breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut.White teeth flashing in his dark face: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.I stagger.But he didn’t get up, the bastard. He stayed down.”

“Some people wouldn't see a traitor when they looked at me. Some people would see a survivor. Call me anything you like—I sleep fine at night. But you will look at me when you say it. Or I'll get so far in your face you'll be seeing me with your eyes closed. You'll be seeing me in your nightmares. I'll scorch myself on the backs of your eyelids. Get off my back and stay off it. I'm not the woman I used to be. If you want a war with me, you'll get one. Just try me. Give me an excuse to go play in that dark place inside my head.”

“Was he a good kisser, Ms. Lane?” Barrons asked, watching me carefully.I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand at the memory. “It was like being owned.”Some women like that.”Not me.”Perhaps it depends on the man doing the owning.”I doubt it. I couldn’t breathe with him kissing me.”One day you may kiss a man you can’t breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.”Right, and one day my prince might come.”I doubt he’ll be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.”

“He looked at me and I shivered. I never get enough of him. Never will. He lives. I breathe. I want. Him. Always. Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever. Later we would go to bed, and when he rose over me, dark and vast and eternal, I'd know joy. Who Knew? Much later we might fly a couple of Hunters to the moon.”

“He strips his shirt over his head and I catch my breath, watching those long hard muscles ripple. I know how his shoulders look, bunched, when he's on top of me, how his face gets tight with lust, as he eases inside me. "Who am I?""Jericho""Who are you?" He kicks off his boots, steps out of his pants. He's commando tonight.My breath whooshes out of me in a run-on word: "Whogivesafuck?”