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I was a kiss away—okay, maybe a few nights of sleeping with the enemy and despising myself more than I ever thought possible—from getting what I wanted.
Humans have no word for it. It means a state beyond death.
It is less than nothing. Nothing is something.
I wasn’t prepared for death. Nobody is.
There were worse ways to be tortured than with a vision of Jericho Barrons naked.
“Stop staring at my dick,” he growled. Oh, yes, it was definitely an illusion. “Barrons loved me staring at his dick,” I informed it. “He would have been happy if I’d stared at his dick all day long, composing odes to its perfection.”
“Bloody hell. Ms. Lane, you drive me bloody fucking crazy.”
Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.
Re-create the world just for Jericho Barrons? The thought was ridiculous.
Men are so complicated.
I can smell him. The scent of his skin is one I will never forget, no matter how long I live. I know the taste of him in my mouth. I know the smell we make together.
I’d like to shove him back on the desk. Straddle him. Dump a storm of emotion across his body with mine.
Men are wired different. I think for them, it’s about stamping out all trace, all memory, of their competitor as quickly and completely as possible. And they feel that the only way they can do it is with their body, their sweat, their semen. As if they can re-mark us. I think sex is so intense for them, they can be so easily ruled by it, that they think we can, too.
The décor promised uninhibited eroticism, pleasure for pleasure’s sake, sex worth dying for.
You can’t save people from themselves.
The message was clear: If you want it, we’ve got it, and if we don’t, we’ll create it for you.
“When I say jump, you say how high.”
I grew up in the Deep South, in the heart of the Bible Belt, where there are still a few men who refuse to look at a woman that isn’t a relative. If a woman is with a man they need to speak with—whether it’s her daddy, boyfriend, or husband—they’ll look at the man the entire time. If the woman asks a question and they bother answering at all, they direct their reply to the man. They even turn to the side a little, as if catching a glimpse of her in their periphery might condemn them to eternal damnation.
Give me an excuse to go play in that dark place inside my head.”
Three men stared at me with the dead, emotionless gazes of executioners. But, hey—they were all looking.
I was astonished by the depth of hostility I felt.
“Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.”
A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw. He was pissed.
His dark gaze promised retribution for my oversight. So did mine.
If the one dies young, the other who longs for death will hunt it.
Ironically, now that I’d become obsessed with wondering who and what I was, I was less worried about who and what he was.
The threat was delivered tonelessly, with utter disinterest. It was chilling.
Death is my morning coffee. I like blood and the sound of bones breaking. It turns me on.
Don’t make me give you a lesson. There are things that can break you. You wouldn’t believe the madness certain kinds of pain can induce.”
“You two drive me bug-fuck.
I dreamed of the sad, beautiful woman
Then an Unseelie Prince was there beside her (us). But he was not one of the three I knew, one of the three that had raped me. It was the fourth. The one I’d never seen. In that strange way of knowing things in dreams, I knew it was War.
He was far more beautiful than the other Unseelie Princes and far more terrifying.
Here was the ultimate trickster, the destroyer. And I understood that Death wasn’t the one to be feared. War was the one that laid waste to lives.
Raw sugar and caffeine in the morning. Only sex could make it better.
“I do not know why you do not enjoy seeing me nude. I enjoy seeing you nude.”
“You have accepted my invitation. I see it in your eyes. They have taken on a languorous sheen. I find it arousing.”
I was fatally flawed. I couldn’t say no.
“What’s with the belly chain?” He seemed to have a fondness for them. “When I have sex with you from behind, I will use it to pull you closer, push in deeper.”
“One day you will wish to talk of me. You will have as many questions of my existence and my place in Fae history. It is majestic, far more so than Cruce’s. He was a fledgling prince. I have more to offer.”
“Spend a thousand years with another and tell me it is not unnatural. At the very least, tedious.”
Cruce was the only one of the king’s children to bear a paternal resemblance. Like the king himself, Cruce had majestic black wings.”
If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t control it.
Fire to his chill. Ice to her flame.
The black floors of the Unseelie King were calling me. I wanted to be in that boudoir again. I wanted to see him this time, to see the king’s face.
“You haven’t fucked me since you were Pri-ya. There’s an action for you. Says pretty much all there is to say.”
“You want me, Jericho. Admit it. A lot more than once or twice. I’m under your skin. You think about me all the time. I keep you awake at night. Go ahead, say it.”
“—I wasn’t trying to have sex with you—”
‘Like’ is such a puerile word. Mediocre people like things. The only question of any significant emotive content is: Can you live without it?”
You thought it meant something that I died for you. Did you dress it up in romance? Compose sonnets memorializing my great sacrifice? Did it make you like me better? Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.”
