“He was hard lines, chiseled flesh, bronzed skin. I was a marshmallow melting in a cup of cocoa.”

“What I ate for breakfast on school mornings was one buttered roll--a soft roll, not a hard roll--and one cup of cocoa; any attempt to alter this menu I regarded as a plot to poison me.”

“He chiseled open the fault lines in the others' personalities.”

“How could I remain unyielding? His words penetrated the flimsy barriers I’d set up around my heart. I’d meant to set up a barbed wire fence, but the barbs ended up being covered with marshmallows. He slipped through my defenses easily. He touched his forehead to my hand, and my marshmallow heart melted.”

“In a pocket of his knapsack he'd found a last half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy and then poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim.You promised not to do that, the boy said.What?You know what, Papa.He poured the hot water back into the pan and took the boy's cup and poured some of the cocoa into his own and then handed it back.I have to watch you all the time, the boy said.”

“It was as though he was pure sexual energy contained in a wrapper of smooth, bronze skin, and damn, it wasn’t fair that a demon should be so cover-model handsome.”