“And when the governess had left, he would slip out of his own room and peer at her door until her light was extinguished at last, before he returned to bed to stew anew in lust and yearning.A habit that he’d kept to this day, whenever they happened to be under the same roof.Her light turned off. He sighed. How long would he keep at this? Soon he would be twenty-seven. Did he still plan to stand in a dark passage in the middle of the night and gaze upon her door when he was thirty-seven? Forty-seven? Ninetyseven?”

“He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”

“His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, and barring some cosmic disaster, the advent of some unexpected black hole into which the earth might be sucked, with the attendant reversal or suspension of time, in very few hours he would be waking up to a world in which he was numbered among the seven-year-olds.”

“If he took her into his arms, he would keep her. He wouldn't let her suffer the way the other mortals had when he'd left them. He would keep her, with his court's permission or without it. Irial wouldn't take her, and Keenan wouldn't stand between them.”

“I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, it would be on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a big production of finding my wallet. He stands in the door holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I'll finish off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.”

“She’d practically ripped his clothes off before they got into her apartment, had him inside her before the sound of the door closing had stopped vibrating through the apartment. He’d pressed her to the door and pounded into her until he couldn’t stand up. He’d carried her to the bedroom, where she took over, riding him until he curled his body up to embrace her, so that his breath was on her lips when they reached their climax together.”