“Is he really so much like the monster James tracked across Siberia?"Her eyes popped wide open, and then began flickering wildly from Edward to Seth to me, around and around."Not the same?" she snarled in her little girl's soprano. "Impossible!”

“I couldn’t take my eyes off the little dark girl and the way, like a queen, she walked around and was even reduced by the sullen bartender to menial tasks such as bringing us drinks and sweeping the back. Of all the girls in there she needed the money most; maybe her mother had come to get money from her for her little infant/ sisters and brothers. It never, never occurred to me just to approach her and give her some money. I have a feeling she would have taken it with a degree of scorn, and scorn from the likes of her made me flinch. In my madness I was actually in love with her for the few hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach. Strange that Neal and Frank also failed to approach her; her unimpeachable dignity was the thing that made her poor in a wild old whorehouse, and think of that. At one point I saw Neal leaning like a statue toward her, ready to fly, and befuddlement cross his face as she glanced coolly and imperiously his way and he stopped rubbing his belly and gaped and finally bowed his head. For she was the queen.”

“She gazed up at me wide-eyed from the shed floor and bit her lip seductively. Unfortunately it was her top lip so she looked like a piranha.”

“This girl: she bent reality around her like a lens bending light, she pleated it into so many flickering layers that you could never tell which one you were looking at, the longer you stared the dizzier you got.”

“He scooted his chair so close to hers that she fought the urge to back away. She gulped at his nearness. The lustful gleam flashing in his eyes made him like the Big Bad Wolf looming over her. “How much plainer can I make it for you? You were so damn sexy in that green dress. Your hair was down and fell in waves around your shoulders. And you kept giving me those innocent little smiles from across the room.” His breath scorched against her cheek before he whispered into her ear. “I’ve never wanted to fuck someone so much as I wanted to you.”

“King-sized? It would take up all my space. I need wide-open spaces."She glanced at Kane for help, but he was rolling around on a matress and moaning in a loud, orgasmic manner. She rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh.”