He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the...
How are you feeling?" I leaned away from him. "Gross." Aiden frowned. "Gross?" "I haven't brushed my teeth or washed my face in days. Don't come near me." He laughed. "Alex, come on." "Seriously, I'm gross." I put my hand over my mouth. Ignoring my p...
A son says to his Mother: "Mother, today I fought with my friend." His Mother says: "Why did you fight with your friend?" "Because he demanded something of me, and I would not give it to him." "Why did you not give it to him?" "Because it was mine." ...
He was sound asleep, his long legs stretched out in front of him, the blessed fire blazing, an empty bottle of wine by his side. He hadn't been shaved recently, and he looked rumpled, dissolute and beautiful. Like a fallen angel. She moved to stand i...
On one stretcher lay a man who had been mutilated in a particularly monstrous way. A large splinter from the shell that had mangled his face, turning his tongue and lips into a red gruel without killing him, had lodged in the bone structure of his ja...
I need to know, Hannah. Why did you fucking leave?” His brutal tone is clear as his fingers trace their way up my thigh and skim over the silk material of my underwear. I push my pelvis towards him; I need his fingers in me now. He has different id...
Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his...
I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he st...
I had to stop linking every single thing that happened to me with Kennedy. Realization dawned then, that he was still my default. Over the past three years, we’d become each other’s habit. And though he’d broken his habit of me when he walked a...
What am I, your wife?' Boyd asked him, highly amused. Sin seemed to consider that for a moment. 'You would need to exchange bodies with my new boss for that. You can be my slave instead.' Boyd could not help a startled laugh at that. 'I don't know if...
All right, Chris, you've given me a breather. I'm prepared for anything. And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself." I kissed him quickly on the lips, and told him to go on, to hit m...
I've been waiting for you all night and day,' she said. Froi shivered. He realised that the words came from Quintana the ice maiden. Realised, as he felt his face heating up, that the idea of this Quintana waiting for him with excitement spoke to par...
What do you think?" she asked, snapping him out of his reverie. "How am I doing?"... He squatted down beside her. "You did a good job." Their knees touched but instead of pulling away, Sam held her position, pressing ever so slightly against him. "Re...
You still owe me a million dollars." I'd presented him with a bill for proving his innocence and getting him freed from prison. He had yet to pay. Couldn't imagine why. "Yeah, I was hoping we could work that out." "The interest alone is going to kill...
I loved my father, but I was not like him. I never needed to believe the best of people. I took them as they were: two-faced, desperate, kind - perhaps all at once. But to Pa, they were all children of god, poor troubled sheep, who only needed love a...
When the name of Gail Wynand became a threat in the publishing world, a group of newspaper owners took him aside-at a city charity affair which all had to attend-and reproached him for what they called hid debasement of the public taste. "It is not m...
He needed the people and the clamour around him. There was no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent-admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was...
Did you hear about the lawsuit? Mary asked. "No, what?" "I hear that he is so big," she lifted her eyebrows to indicate what she meant, "that he put a girl in the hospital and she is suing him, because she can never have babies because of him." "Ewww...
Adriana loved even the rank animal smell of the man's body, her sweat-slicked breasts and belly flattened beneath him, and her arms and legs clutching him as a drowning woman might clutch another person to save her life. Don't don't don't don't leave...
Hector wished suddenly that leaving the circus was as easy as joining. He didn't fancy the ghost of Harvey Burfoot hunting him down and passing judgement on him. Troupe mythology varied on the details – some said he had the ability to stop your hea...
In a way, Darius brings the vampire back to a more classical interpretation. A modern day Dracula who is charming, sensual, and completely monstrous. There is no pretense of humanity with him. He considers himself a member of a species that is the tr...
