“Jesus," I said. "That was bad."Seth looked startled—and then hurt. "Bad?""No, not performance bad—more like dirty, wicked bad. The kind of stuff that gets an R rating.""What, we can't do that?" He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my waist, nuzzling my neck."Well, yeah...er, well, damn it. We're not supposed to be. Not at all. It's just that last time, it was like...I don't know. It was making love. This time it was...""Fucking?" he supplied."Oh God," I groaned. "Seth Mortensen just said 'fucking' out loud. The end times are near.”

“Oh God," I groaned, "Seth Mortensen just said 'fucking' out loud. The end of times are near.”

“Seth laughed when he saw me.“Hey,” I said, poking him with my foot, “be nice.”“I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you look anything less than…” He paused, playing with word choice. “Well-planned.”“Why, you silver-tongued romantic devil. That is the look I usually go for. Other women go for sexy or chic or beautiful. But me? Well-planned all the way.”“You know what I mean. Besides, unplanned isn’t a bad look for you. Not bad at all.”His voice sounded deliciously low and dangerous, and something ignited between us as we held each other’s eyes.”

“No," he said, voice thick and husky. His fingers dug into the chair's arms. "You'd better not get too close."I stopped, laughing softly. "You don't strike me as the assaulting type, Mortensen.""Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything.”

“We've had to deal with so many complications. We're still dealing with them. And what can we do? Nothing - well, unless we take your side's point of view and make deals with the devil. But why? Why can't we make deals with God? People do all the time. 'God, if you do this for me, I promise to be good.' Stuff like that.Yeah, but I don't see any contracts like you guys have. No hard evidence that it works. How come we can only get things we want by being bad? Why can't we get them by being good?”

“My muscles informed me they did not want to go through any more exercise today. So I suggest that maybe he should let me off this time. He laughed, and I'm pretty sure it was at me...not with me. "Why is that funny?" "Oh," he said, his smile dropping. "You were serious.""Of course I was! Look, I've technically been awake for two days. Why do we have to start this training now? Let me go to bed." I whined. "It's just one hour.""How do you feel right now?""I hurt like hell.""You'll feel worse tomorrow.""So?""So, better get a jump on it while you still feel...not as bad.""What kind of logic is that?" I retorted.”

“Hey, he's awesome. A little unstable, but awesome. We got along great." Adrian opened the door to the building we were seeking. "And he's a badass in his way too. I mean, any other guy who wore scarves like that? He'd be laughed out of this school. Not Abe. He'd beat someone almost as badly as you would. In fact..." Adrian's voice turned nervous. I gave him a surprised look."In fact what?""Well...Abe said he liked me. But he also made it clear what he'd do to me if I ever hurt you or did anything bad." Adrian grimaced. "In fact, he described what he'd do in very graphic detail. Then, just like that, he switched to some random, happy topic. I like the guy, but he's scary.”