Zahara roared and threw herself at him, smacking Bryan back against the ground and swinging a right hook into his nose. She exclaimed in triumph as her fist connected with his face, hoping it hurt his nose as bad as the punch hurt her knuckles. Zahar...
You're doing it wrong." "Son, I've got a gun to your chest and you're telling me that I'm doing it wrong?" "Yes" "How?" "Closer isn't better." He disarmed her with a swift motion, then offered the weapon back to her. "Further away you are, the less u...
I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon m...
You were wrong. She really is the new general in town." I smiled back, hoping he wasn't aware of my body's reaction to us standing so close. "Maybe. But, it's okay. You can still be colonel." He arched an eyebrow. "Oh? Did you demote yourself? Colone...
When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother lo...
Maintaining connections with family and community across class boundaries demands more than just summary recall of where one’s roots are, where one comes from. It requires knowing, naming, and being ever-mindful of those aspects of one’s past tha...
I close my mouth and shut my eyes. I can feel the tears building the tears building up again. I beg myself not to cry, not here, not in assembly with Sally right next to me so desperate for me to crumble. I feel a finger tap on my left shoulder. Sall...
Doubt filled her eyes. “What are we betting for, anyway?” He hadn’t thought about that, but it took his brain all of three seconds to come up with an answer. He knew damn well what he wanted from her. Had for years. “A kiss.” The words slip...
Her beauty was classic, timeless. Just the line of her neck, the curve of her cheek, the way the dress draped her hips, was enough to stop the room. When she’d turned away to look at something on the table and he’d seen the back of the dress, he ...
If I release you, you won't scream? I'd rather not continue the conversation like this." She shook her head, and he freed her. She scrambled away from him, feeling the grooves of the headboard bite into her back when she slammed into it. He sat back ...
No one likes sarcasm, Miss Cain. I’ve merely delayed my exit to promise you something. You took my straight razor, li’l darlin’. That I view as an unforgivable offense. So when the time comes, when you have served your purpose, I swear to you I...
Yes, it’s—” Dimitri bit off his words and glanced at Rose, then back at the drawing. “It’s a kind of marker worn by women in, uh, dhampir communes.” Rose had no problem stating what his delicate sensibilities had held back from. “A bloo...
Lucifer sharpened his gaze and focused on Ajax. “Yes… I want you to drive over to New Jersey, load those two corpses into your car and take them back to the Italians… personally” “In my car?” “They haven’t been in the water more than ...
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On t...
A couple hours went by, and the storm began to turn back to the sea. The dark clouds rolled away, leaving white, fluffy ones in their place. We were safe, and the rock in the distance was still there. We stepped out of the car and walked over to the ...
I'm silenced by his right hand cupping my chin and ear, his left hand flattening against my ribs as he gently pushes me back against the wall. I can feel the brick pressing into my naked upper back, cold and rough. His kiss is slow, tender...firm. Hi...
The Holy Spirit Asks that you accept the idea of one mind wholeheartedly, for this is the Correction to the error called ego. The ego was the belief in private minds with private thoughts, but if mind is one the ego has no foundation on which to stan...
I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my father's waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the equator of his body; he was that much larger than life. Then one da...
I didn't look over my shoulder; there wasn't a sound behind me on the pavement, but I knew he was coming slowly after me. The crawl of the skin up and down my back told me. Little needles of warning that gathered at the back of my skull told me. I'd ...
But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to ...
I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds in the sky. I'm looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open. I still don't know where I'm going; I decided I'm not crazy or alien. It's just that I'm more like one of those kids they fin...
