“His kiss was brutal, punishing, for making him feel like this. He wasdesperate. Out of control. Never had he experienced this kind of irrationalurgency. He needed her. Like a starving man needed food. Like a dying manneeded salvation. Now. Before everything went to hell. Before she could change her mind.”

“As soon as the man had gone, Caitrina moved to stand before him, her soft feminine scent clouding his senses. Would it always be like this—this clawing need for her? The inability to think when she was near? The feeling that if he didn’t take her in his arms and kiss her, he would surely die?”

“He kissed her then, not gently, not tenderly. He didn’t kiss her to comfort her. He took her mouth hungrily, almost savagely, wanting to punish her for having a body that tormented him, for telling him that his last kiss had meant nothing, needed to punish her for letting scum like Jack Caldwell call her honey, and for ever thinking about a man who wasn’t him.”

“He did know: he knew her right away, and he felt known by her, and that was where the trouble really began...She could have been exotic or worldly or a Valkyrie and it would have meant nothing to him. But that Alice saw him―that was a feeling Amos had never experienced before, and it felt like a revelation and also like a virus.”

“Like her father, he wasn't comfortable sharing his thoughts and feelings. She tried to explain that she needed to be closer to him, but it had never seemed to make a difference.”

“She cried out into his kiss, her hands clawing his shoulders, adrift now in a pleasure that threatened to consume her. In her sexual lifetime she had never known anything like it. Had never tasted such a dark kiss, one that warned her he had no intention of making allowances for sensual inexperience. He was hungry. Needy. And she was the meal he craved.”