“Jake's POV: ...And we laughed. Suddenly my palms were sweating under my gloves. I slid my hand away and we got back to work, but I felt as if my whole body was on high alert. There was no getting around it anymore. I was falling for this girl.Big-time.”

“We laughed and laughed and passed the bong around each other taking turns to burn our lungs. The room was smokier than ever before and it was late in the afternoon when I realised I was stuck.I was stuck to the sofa like glue. My whole body sank deeper and deeper into the material. My blood felt like liquid lead in my limbs as if lifting my arm could not be possible without a powerful crane. My mind drifted to the big cranes you see on building sites and I imagined it attempting to lift my arm as it buckled under the weight.I closed my eyes unable to hold my eyelids open anymore. My body sank even deeper as if the sofa was melting chocolate and my body heat was melting it beneath me. It began to feel like thick treacle beneath me as if it would stick to me making it harder for me to move or get up then I felt his hand again.”

“Inexplicably, I felt drops of icy sweat dripping up my back. I am aware that icy and sweat are contradictory by their very nature and should not be able to coexist in the same freakish bead of ICK WHAT IS THAT falling up my back. I am also aware things are not supposed to fall up. For that matter, criminals aren’t supposed to get it on with crimefighters. Yet here we were: Catwoman, Batman, icy, sweat, dripping, up. Sometimes life is like that.”

“I choose you," he said very softly, "Max."Then his hard, rough hand tenderly cuppoed my chin, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, and every synapse in my brain shorted out.We had kissed a couple of times before, but this was different. This time, I squelched my immediate, overwhelming desire to run away screaming. I closed my eyes and put my arms around him despite my fear. Then somehow we slid sideways so we were lying in the cool sand. I was holding him fiercely, and he was kissing me fiercely, and it was...just so, so intensely good. Once I got past my usual, gut-wrenching terror, there was a long, sweet slide into mindlessness, when all I felt was Fang, and all I heard was his breathing, and all I could think was "Oh, God, I want to do this all the time.”

“That was . . .” I trailed off trying to find the proper adjective.“Long overdue?”“Long overdue? You’re the one who got skittish when I mentioned how I felt and backed away when we almost kissed.”“You call me on all my crap, don’t you?” He laughed throwing his head back. “That’s one of the things I love about you,” he said. His fingersskimmed up my shoulders until they cradled my neck and my whole body tingling.”

“So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing -- a spontaneous handstand--isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands. ”