“Sometimes you wake up from a dream. Sometimes you wake up in a dream. And sometimes, every once in a while, you wake up in someone else's dream. ”
“Well, that depends, I suppose. I heard someone once say that men dance the same way they have sex. So, if you want everyone here to think you're the kind of guy who just sits around and—"
He stood up. "Let's dance.”
“We all have moments of weakness. It’s how we recover from them that really counts.”
“Love is rarely flawless,” Carter pointed out. “Humans delude themselves by thinking it has to be. It is the imperfection that makes love perfect.”
“Vampires. Honestly, they're like children sometimes. ”
“Very often the things we most desire come only after much patience and struggle.”
“I figured I could read more than five pages tonight since I'd been deprived for the last couple of days. When I finished the fifteenth, I discovered I was three pages from the next chapter. Might as well end with a clean break. After I was done, I sighed and leaned back, feeling decadent and spent. Pure bliss. Books were a lot less messy than orgasms.”
“Look, don’t get me wrong. I worship the ground this guy walks on. I’m excited to meet him tonight. I’m dying to meet him tonight. If he wanted to carry me off and make me his love slave, I’d do it, so long as I got advance copies of his books.”
“It’s important to keep up appearances with books,” I explained. “Image goes a long way in this business.”
He dared a look over at me, still nervous but steadily recovering his composure. “I go more for content.”
"Really?” I repositioned slightly so that we were touching again, the soft flannel of his shirt brushing my bare skin. “Because I could have sworn a moment ago you were pretty caught up in outside appearance.”
His eyes shifted down again, but I could see a smile curving his lips. “Well. Some things are so striking, they can’t help but draw attention to themselves.”
"And doesn’t that make you curious about what’s inside?”
"Mostly it makes me want to get you some advanced copies.”
Advanced copies? What did he—?
"Seth? Seth, where—ah, there you are.” Paige turned down our aisle, Doug following behind. She brightened when she saw me, and I felt my stomach sink out of me and hit the floor with a thud as I put two and two together. No. No. It couldn’t be—
"Ah, Georgina. I see you’ve already met Seth Mortensen.”
“How do you know if a demon is lying? His lips are moving.”
“Hey, if you'd wanted to avoid 'this,' you shouldn't have lured me last night. Now it's too late. You might as well avoid the long, drawn-out pain and get it over with quickly. Sort of like taking off a Band-Aid. Or cutting off a limb."
"Wow, who says there's no romance left in the world?”
“Lucky Charms?” I asked.
“Magically delicious,” he explained. “Requisite for any sort of building project.”
I shook my head, still amazed at how he had managed to weasel his way over here. “This isn’t a date.”
He cut me a scandalized look. "Obviously. I’d bring Count Chocula for that.”
“Longing surged up within me. I wanted it. Oh God, I wanted it. I didn't want to hear Jerome chastise me for my "all lowlifes, all the time" seduction policy. I wanted to come home and tell someone about my day. I wanted to go out dancing on the weekends. I wanted to take vacations together. I wanted someone to hold me when I was upset, when the ups and downs of the world pushed me too far.
I wanted someone to love. ”
“I hope I redeemed myself with the whole dancing-sex comparison.”
“I suppose there were a couple of notable similarities,” I observed, holding a straight face.
“A couple? What about attention to detail, heavy exertion, lots of sweat, and single-minded determinedness to get the job done and done well?”
“Mostly I was thinking you just don’t talk during sex.” Mean perhaps, but I couldn’t resist.
“Well, my mouth has better things to do.”
I swallowed, my own mouth dry. “Are we still talking about dancing?”
“Kill me, Doug. Just kill me now. Put me out of my misery.”
“Christ, Kincaid, what did you say to him?” murmured Doug.
“Well,” I told Doug, “I ripped on his fans and on how long it takes for his books to come out.”
Doug stared at me, his expectations exceeded.
“Then I said—not knowing who he was—that I’d be Seth Mortensen’s love slave in exchange for advanced copies of his books.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a Georgina Kincaid Instruction Manual around somewhere to help me avoid these embarrassing blunders in the future.”
“We sell them downstairs.”
“Oh yeah? Is there a page on how to woo the fair Georgina?”
“Page? Hell, there’s a whole chapter.”
“Required reading, I’d imagine.”
“Definitely.”
“Most good things come with the risk of something bad.”
“Statistics show that most mortals sell their souls for five reasons: sex, money, power, revenge, and love. In that order.”
“Aubrey, crouching on a nearby counter, watched me with squinty eyes, apparently pondering why anyone would willingly immerse themselves in water ever, let alone for extended periods of time. ”
“It was a nephilim.”
“A nephi-what?” asked Hugh, startled.
“Isn’t that a character on Sesame Street?” Peter spoke up for the first time.”
“Immortals are, by definition, immortal. End of story.”
“To Thetis,
Long overdue, I know, but every often the things we most desire come only after much patience and struggle. That is a human truth, I think. Even Peleus knew that.
-Seth”
“All right, Mortensen, last chance. Are you ready to make the switch from voyeur to exhibitionist?”
He inclined his head toward me curiously. “Are we still talking about dancing?”
“Well, that depends, I suppose. I heard someone once say that men dance the same way they have sex. So, if you want everyone here to think you’re the kind of guy who just sits around and—”
He stood up. “Let’s dance.”
“Sleep with Seth Mortensen? Good grief. It was the most preposterous thing I'd ever heard. It was appalling. If I absorbed his life force, there was no telling how long it'd be until his next book came out.”
“Seth told us good night and left.
I watched him go wistfully. “Anyone else here feel like swooning?”
“Do you know the rest?"Doug asked me expectantly.
"What?The Achilles was a dysfuctional psychopath? Yeah I know that."
"Well, yeah, everyone knows that. I mean the really cool part. About Thetis and Peleus." I shook my head, and he continued, professor-like, "Thetis was a sea mymph, and Peleus was a mortal who loved her. Only, when he went to woo her, she was a real bitch about it."
"How so?"
"She was a shape-shifter."
I nearly dropped the book. "What?"
Doug nodded. "He approached her, and she turned into all sorts of shit to scare him off - wild animals, forces of natures, monsters, whatever."
"What... what'd he do?"
"He held on. Grabbed her and wouldn't let go through all of those terrible transformations. No matter what she turned into, he just held on.”
“Because...Beacause it's so good, and there's only one chance to read a book for the first time, and I want it to last. That experience. I'd finish it in a day otherwise, and that'd be like...like eating a carton of ice cream in one sitting. Too much richness over too quickly. This way, I can draw it out. Make the book last longer. Savor it. I have to since they don't come out that often.”
“What were good and evil, really, but stupid categories? Stupid categories
that restricted people and punished or rewarded them based on how they responded to their own natures, natures they really didn't have any way to control.”
“I heard some interesting things about your performance up here."
"I hear interesting things about your 'performance' all the time Doug, but you don't hear me making jokes about it.”
“Just friends, just friends. Standing there in the bookstore, watching Seth walk away, I half wondered how anyone could still use that line. But I knew why, of course. It was used because people still believed it. Or at least they wanted to.”
“And despite the fact that they all had their eyes open, every one of them looked dead.”
“If the Devil created Texas like some folks say he did, this is where he rested on the seventh day.”
“He looked back at her. 'I mean Miranda's plan?'
She hated admitting it, but...'As crazy as it is, it might have.'
He inhaled. 'Did you like kissing him?'
Too much She almost lied, but then...'Probably no more than you enjoyed kissing Jessie.' And she knew he enjoyed it because he'd looked so guilty the day she'd called him on it.
He stared out the window again. 'You could have lied on that one.”
“He was like a long beaker in chemistry class, and the top was always bubbling over because some interesting process was taking place inside”
“I'll give her anything.
I'll tear my fucking chest open with my bare hands, rip out my heart and hand it to her, if that's what she needs.
All she has to do is tell me.
All she has to do is ask.”
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