“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.”
“As Myron dashed back and forth in the wave of basketball action, a thought sneaked in through the back door of his brain. The thought stayed on the fringes, hiding behind a couch, popping into view every once in a while before ducking back down again. You can do this, the thought taunted. You can play with them. Myron”
“don’t start dieting until you’re psychologically ready, which might not be until two weeks from today.”
“The pigs were pushing their noses through the slats in the truck bed, which made Langston so unaccountably sad she thought she would have to sit down on the sidewalk. How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling, animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself? And what were the pigs searching for, after all, but air and freedom?”
“The most dangerous thing of all, and something he wanted to warn me about above all else, the one thing that had consigned whole regiments of unfortunate young people to the twilight world of insanity, was reading books. This objectionable practice had increased among the younger generation, and Dad was more pleased than the could say to not that I had not yet displayed any such tendencies. Lunatic asylums were overflowing with folk who'd been reading too much. Once upon a time they'd been just like you and me, physically strong, straightforward, cheerful, and well balanced. Then they'd started reading. Most often by chance. A bout of flu perhaps, with a few days in bed. An attractive book cover that had aroused some curiosity. And suddenly the bad habit had taken hold. The first book had led to another. Then another, and another, all links in a chain that led straight down into the eternal night of mental illness. It was impossible to stop. It was worse than drugs.
It might just be possible, if you were very careful, to look at the occasional book that could teach you something, such as encyclopedias or repair manuals. The most dangerous kind of book was fiction-- that's where all the brooding was sparked and encouraged. Damnit all! Addictive and risky products like that should only be available in state-regulated monopoly stores, rationed and sold only to those with a license, and mature in age.”
“Today that legend is inscribed on the stones that were used to build the walls of the school, and as the water falls out of the sky and over those stones, the words of the legend are carried down from the mountains and into the fields and gardens and orchards of Afghanistan. And as the water and the words rush past, who can fail to turn to his neighbor and whisper, with humility and awe-if this is what the weakest, the least valued, the most neglected among us are capable of achieving, truly is there anything we cannot do?”
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