“Why couldn’t she get the man out of her mind? Because he reminded you what that hole between your legs is really for.”

“Any man for her had better be well-dressed, well-groomed, and well-hung, and if he couldn’t get her off at least twice with his mouth, she wouldn’t return his calls. Couldn’t imagine why she was thirty-nine and still single.”

“Looks like you’re naked.”His jaw worked as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I beg your pardon?”“Beg all you want, you’re still going to be naked.” Tabitha paused at the wicked image in her mind. “Come to think of it, a gorgeous, begging, naked man… that’s the stuff of fantasies. Begging won’t get you your clothes, but it could get you something else.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.”

“Doyou miss a parent you never knew?” he whispered.Kate considered his question for some time. His voice had held a hoarse urgency that told her there wassomething critical about her reply. Why, she couldn’t imagine, but something about her childhood clearlyrang a chord within his heart.“Yes,” she finally answered, “but not in the way you would think. You can’t really miss her, because youdidn’t know her, but there’s still a hole in your life—a big empty spot, and you know who was supposedto fit there, but you can’t remember her, and you don’t know what she was like, and so you don’t knowhow she would have filled that hole.” Her lips curved into asad sort of smile. “Does this make any sense?”Anthony nodded. “It makes a great deal of sense”

“What a coward she was after all! She tried to think of some hero out of one of her books,someone whose skin she could slip into, to make her feel stronger, bigger, braver. Why couldshe remember nothing but stories of frightened people when Capricorn looked at her? Sheusually found it so easy to escape somewhere else, to get right inside the minds of people andanimals who existed only on paper, so why not now? Because she was afraid. "Because fear killseverything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.”

“What are the thorns really telling her? It's why she won't let us see them, why she clings to them--or they cling to her--as though she got herself buried in a bramble thicket and she can't get out and we can't get in to free her.”