“He pulls me around and kisses me. "You're Mac," he says. "And I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?"
I do.
Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.”
“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.”
“The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were trouble."
"Ditto."
"I wanted to drag you between the shelves, fuck you senseless, and send you home."
"If you'd done that, I never would have left."
"You're still here anyway."
"You don't have to sound so sour about it."
"You're upsetting my entire existence."
"Fine, I'll leave."
"Try and I'll chain you up.”
“One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can’t breathe around it and you realize you don’t need air. Oxygen is trivial. Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset. To touch the one you love. To try again.”
“V'lane: Are you busy tomorrow MacKayla ?
Barrons: She's working on old texts with me.
V'lane: Ah. Old texts. A banner day at the bookstore.
Barrons: We're translating Kama Sutra...with interactive aids.”
“When you know who I am. Let me be your man.”
“I hate fate. I don’t believe in her. Unfortunately, I think the bitch believes in me.”
“Time heals.
No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue is not a good thing. It is merely the wound's other face.”
“Love knows no right or wrong.
Love is. Only is.”
“Some things are sacred. Until you act like they're not. Then you lose them”
“I don't have any idea what to wear anymore, so I tried to cover all bases."
"Try skin."
"Little chilly for that."
We looked at each other across the coffee table.
His eyes didn't say, I'd heat you up, and mine didn't say What are you waiting for? He didn't reply, Fuck if I'm making the first move, so I was careful not to say, I wish you would, because I can't, because I'm... and he didn't snap ...choking on your pride?!
"As if you aren't."
"Excuse me?"
"Really Barrons," I said drily. "I'm not the only one who didn't just not have that conversation, and you know it."
There was the faint, sexy lift of his lip. "You're a piece of work, Ms. Lane."
"Right back at you.”
“I didn’t ask. Some things are better left unsaid.
He looked at me and I shivered. I never get enough of him.
Never will.
He lives.
I breathe.
I want. Him. Always.
Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever.
Later we would go to bed, and when he rose over me, dark and vast and eternal, I’d know joy.”
“They'll try to kill you."
"Good thing I'm hard to kill." Only one thing concerned me. "Will you?"
"Never. I'm the one who will always watch over you. Always be there to fuck you back to your senses when you need it, the one who will never let you die.”
“We have to save the world," I reminded him.
He reached for me. "The world can wait. I can't.”
“Hope strengthens. Fear kills[...] That simple adage is master of every situation, every choice. Each morning we wake up, we get to choose between hope and fear and apply one of those emotions to everything we do. Do we greet things that come our way with joy? Or suspicion?”
“I'm not the hero, Mac. Never have been. Never will be. Let us be perfectly clear: I'm not the antihero, either, so quit waiting to discover my hidden potential. There's nothing to redeem me.”
“That's it. Fate is a fickle whore. We're not going. Take your clothes off and get back in my bed.”
“God Said: Let there be light!
I said: Say please.”
“Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.
'Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,' he agrees.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Ancient eyes had stared at me, filled with ancient grief. And something more. Something so alien and unexpected that I'd almost burst into tears. I'd seen many things in his eyes in the time that I'd known him: lust, amusement, sympathy, mockery, caution, fury. But I had never seen this.
Hope. Jericho Barrons had hope, and I was the reason for it.
I would never forget his smile. It had illuminated him from the inside out.”
“He's trying not to laugh. I tell him I would have doomed mankind for him, and he's trying not to laugh.”
“I know part of what turns me on so hard, makes me so violent with lust, is that he's dangerous. I fell for the bad guy. I'm crazy about the one who's trouble. The alpha that doesn't play well with others and doesn't take orders from anyone.”
“You may be trying to claim the woman, his eyes said, but make no mistake, she and the fucking fireplace are mine.”
“Don't leave me, Rainbow Girl."
Rainbow Girl. Was that who I was?
It seemed so long ago. I smiled faintly. "Remember the skirt I wore to Mallucé's the night you told me to dress Goth?"
"It's upstairs in your closet. Never throw it away. It looked like a wet dream on you.”
“Keep hoping to see the light in her eyes. Even knowing it'll mean she's saying good-bye.”
“I'm not good, Mac. Never have been.'
What-true confession time? my eyes tease. Don't need it.
'I want what I want and I take it.'
Is he warning me? What could he possibly threaten me with now?
'There's nothing I can't live with. Only things I won't live without.”
“You’re lying to yourself. Voron made us into serial killers. We can be okay without violence for a few weeks, but after a couple of months, the hand starts itching for the sword. You start looking for that rush. You get irritable, life turns stale, and then one day some fool crosses your path, attacks, and as you cut him down, you feel that short moment of struggle when he leverages his life against yours. If you’re lucky, he’s very good and the fight lasts a few seconds. But even if it doesn’t, that short moment of triumph is like getting an adrenaline shot. Suddenly color comes back into life, food tastes better, sleep is deeper, and sex is rapture.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I lived it and I felt it.”
“I can't believe this," I muttered, cradling the skein of water up close to my chest. "Two weeks in the desert all on account of some assassin who doesn't know how to look out for snakes."
"If you hadn't killed that snake," Naji said calmly, "I would have killed you."
" Oh, shut up.”
“Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that God's writing? If I were writing the book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the story end just right—in the way that's best for us.”
“time. I think I know how the mother of a teenage daughter must feel. Like an indispensable annoyance.”
“Get ready to meet your maker. It won’t be long now. Kisses! A (the real one)”
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