“But never had he felt more enthralled than he was right now, sitting beside Evie on a weathered old dock, with a blazing afternoon sun, almost brutal in its clarity, bathing everything in pure light. Sweat trickled down his back and chest from the steamy heat, and his entire body pulsed with life. Even his fingertips throbbed. It took all of his formidable self-control to prevent himself from pushing her down on the dock and spreading her legs for his entry.”

“He'd been so angry at her -always pushing his buttons, that girl. But then he'd taken her into his arms, and all that anger had blazed into a darker, hotly possessive need that had urged him to bend his head, bite down on the throbbing pulse in her neck, leave a mark.”

“He felt something trickle down his face and he wiped it away irritably. When he looked at the back of his hand, he found trails of red. He had never cried in his life; in fact, he could not cry with no tear ducts. But now, at last, he was. He was crying tears of blood. For her.”

“She loves most the wet colours of his neck when he bathes. And his chest with with its sweat which her fingers grip when he is over her, and the dark, tough arms in the darkness of his tent, or one time in her room when light from the valley's city, finally free of curfew, rose among them like twilight and lit the colour of his body.”

“For years he'd strived to make a difference in the world, and he'd worked like a dog to make that happen, and yet here he was, a man sitting on a dock with his children, and never had he felt more certain that his words mattered.”

“Gabriel pulled her over his body to lie on the bed beside him. His kisses pressed her down into the oblivion of the mattress as her hands explored his chest, his shoulders, his face."I want to lay my kill at your feet," he said, more growl than words, and held her tight by her hair as he marked her neck with his teeth.She writhed against him. She wanted to bite him, she wanted to rip the flesh from his back, but most terrible of all, she didn't want him to stop. Her back arched, her body shattered, she howled.”