“And then sometimes, rarely, in the middle of the night, he’d be sweet. Pulling me into his lap, kissing me, caressing me. Letting me fly but anchoring me with his eyes. Speaking words he’d never dare say in the light of day.”
“That was the funny thing about smiles--if you flashed the right one, no one knew there was more going on inside.”
“His weakness was me. He wanted me and he hated that maybe as much as I hated him.”
“I don’t know, Reeve. Because you do a lot of talking, and all I hear are mixed messages.”
“I’m unmixing them now. Listen. This is the one I want you to hear.”
“Why can’t we worry about each other?”
“The only thing shittier than the way men treated a pretty woman was the way women did.”
“It was a kiss that took—took my desire, took my passion, took my will.”
“Even in my thoughts, he watched me.”
“A flood of inadequacy poured over me, a feeling of I-don’t-belong, but if not here, then where? The room began to close in around me, blanketing me with acute heaviness.”
“I can’t figure you out, Emily.” His words were tight yet even. “I don’t know if I like you or if I just want to fuck you.”
“I understood exactly what it was to want to change. To try to change. To find it impossible.”
“I’m an awful host,” he said eventually. “I should tell you to make yourself at home, but all I care about is making myself at home inside you.”
“He had so much control over me, so much power to have me this close to destruction so quickly. I was exposed. Raw and vulnerable. Caught off guard by how easily he annihilated me each and every time. It scared me.”
“Now the door was open. Now one of us just had to walk through it.”
“I’m trying. I’m going to keep trying with you.”
“He’s a rich, powerful man. Rich, powerful men get away with things all the time. It’s the law of capitalism. It’s especially an issue when those rich, powerful men have ties to men who are richer and more powerful.”
“No,” I told him. “You tell me what I want. That’s what I want.”
“I was here because this was who I was—a strong, independent woman with distinct wants and needs that were only met when I submitted to a man.”
“A glance at his crotch gave me the slightest smidgeon of satisfaction. He was unmistakably hard. He might be punishing me, but he was punishing himself too.”
“He was always rough. Always raw. He fucked me however he wanted.”
“all I hear are mixed messages.” “I’m unmixing them now. Listen. This is the one I want you to hear.”
“There were at least a couple thousand people in front of me—all of them trying to show that they weren’t ugly too. A flood of inadequacy poured over me, a feeling of I-don’t-belong, but if not here, then where?”
“I want you to fuck me!” The words tumbled out. “Hard.”
“Besides, I don’t think that’s something you’d want to hear from your lover.” “Lover?”
“On the bed?” “No. Against the window. From behind. I want you to strip me and press me hard to the glass. So it will feel like anyone can see. And anyone who does will know that I’m special because I’m the one you’re fucking.”
“They were here for the attention and material gain. They were shells waiting to be filled with a man’s desires, blank screens projecting someone else’s wants.”
“And what exactly was it he was saying? That he wanted to take me into his bed? That he wanted to scare me and possibly hurt me and I was supposed to be okay with that?”
“Having them finally touched, finally fondled and caressed, was more erotic than I’d imagined. More pleasurable than I wanted it to be. I decided I would die if he ever stopped. God, how I needed him to stop.”
“What do you want? How do you want it? I never felt like I had a good answer. For the first time, I realized why. Because what I wanted was to not be asked the question.”
“They loved believing they’d affected a woman so much that she was reduced to communicating through gasps and groans.”
“I hate that about guys. At least girls have the decency to be fake and pretend everything’s okay when shit gets weird. Whenever guys get upset, they get all angry and scary”
“I do not need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. Sometimes silence, at the proper season, is wisdom and better than any speech. —Gideon Penman of Muirwood Abbey”
“Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.”
“...I meditated on the passage of time, and how it may be found in both a dry and a wet or gaseous state; how, though lush, it might be dessicated for storage.”
“As god is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it... You don't save it by cutting that thread. - President Nielson”
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