“It was the first time she’d consciously accepted that fact … and the fear that came with the knowledge. Martin had hurt her, but Riaz, he could savage her. “He does these things and they take my breath away, make my chest hurt.”

“For the first time in forever, he was stunned to silence. Not by her words, but by the tenderness in her hands, the worry in her eyes. He was an archangel. He’d been wounded far, far worse and shrugged it off. But then, there had been no woman with sun kissed by the sunset and eyes of storm gray to tear into him for daring to get himself hurt.”

“Raphael lifted a finger, tracing it over her cheekbone. She flinched. Not because he was hurting her. The opposite. The places he touched ... it was as if he had a direct line to the hottest, most feminine part of her. A single stroke and she was embarrassingly damp. But she refused to pull away, refused to give in." (page 33 , Gollancz edition)”

“The man she’d glimpsed that morning, and the one who’d cared enough to put his arms around a packmate who was hurting, he was dangerous, someone who spoke to her soul beyond the primitive tug of sex.”

“Once, he hadn't been able to touch her without causing himself pain. Now, it only hurt when he didn't touch her.”

“I have something for you.”“Yeah? What? Is it shiny?”They both waited until Indigo had jogged away before resuming their conversation. “So,” Riley asked, “what have you got for me?” Taking his hand, she placed it palm-down over her heart. It would hurt like a bitch, she thought, but he was hers to protect as much as she was his. “Me.” And she opened up her soul, laid herself bare.”

“He couldn’t say the words, had spent too long in Silence, but he’d learned other ways to speak. Taking the paperweight she’d knocked off her desk out of his pocket, he put it in her hands. “It’s fixed. As long as you don’t mind more than a few scars.”