You could dress it up with a sequined headband,” Magnus suggested, offering his boyfriend something blue and sparkly. “Just a thought.” “Resist the urge, Alec.” Simon was sitting on the edge of a low wall with Maia beside him, though she ap...
With the snow piling up outside, the warm dry cabin hidden in its fold of the mountain felt like a safe haven indeed, though it had not been such for the people who had lived there. Soldiers had found them and made the cabin trailhead to a path of ex...
The queen's eyes smouldered. "I know my own kind when I see them, and right now there is one in these city walls." She pointed a finger toward the balcony."I want her found and brought to me." "Right," said Kai,"that'll be no problem in a city of two...
Don't you have a religion?" Dorolow asked Horza. "Yes," he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. "My survival." "So... your religion dies with you. How sad," Dorolow said, looking bac...
Do I look that bad?’ I said, my voice quavering with the rejection that I was ashamed for even caring about. ‘Is that what this is all about? How ugly I look?’ Patrick kept his eyes on the back wall of the cave. ‘If you really have to know, i...
She leaned a shoulder against the tunnel wall and thought of Kellan. A Dragon King. A dragon and a King. A gorgeous man who kissed as if there were no tomorrow and made love skillfully, adeptly. He could have let her die. Instead, he took her on a jo...
The great hall was shimmering in light, sun streaming from the open windows, and ablaze with colour, the walls decorated with embroidered hangings in rich shades of gold and crimson. New rushes had been strewn about, fragrant with lavender, sweet woo...
You his brother?' 'Yes, damn it!' I burst out. "And all I want is to get my hands on whoever did this to him!' 'Funny,' said a dick dryly, 'but so do we.' I didn't like him much after that. Sarcasm is out of place when a man has just been brought fac...
With the minivan in the air, rolling counterclockwise, the engine racing, Laurie screaming -- a fraction of a second, that's all -- Jacob would have thought of me -- who had held him, my own baby, looked down into eyes -- and he would have understood...
The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the re...
Find a printer paper and imagine a full-grown bird shaped something like a football with legs standing on it. Imagine 33,000 of these rectangles in a grid. (Broilers are never in cages, and never on multiple levels.) Now enclose the grid with windowl...
YOU WILL DRINK THE COFFEE UNTIL I CAN SEE MY FACE IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CUP!” I did not mean to roar. “But it’s a clay cup.” “I DO NOT CARE!” He finished the coffee. “You did not have to finish it,” I said, because I could perceive tha...
If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we s...
Against all odds, the Academy had come to feel like home. A slimy, moldy, dungeonlike home without working toilets, maybe, but home nevertheless. He and George had even named the rats that lived behind their walls. Every night, they left Jon Cartwrig...
You'll enjoy it. There is much you can learn from books and scrolls," said Jeod. He gestured at the walls. "These books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life." "It sounds intriguing," admitted Eragon. "Alw...
His voice wavered and he looked down abruptly, at last making some vain effort to hide the shameful tears that tracked down his cheeks even as he continued to pin Boyd against the wall. 'I wish I could hate you. God, I wish I could fucking kill you f...
He trailed his eyes down over her beautiful breasts then told her, “You’re going to keep your mouth shut and I’m going togive you that Orgasm you asked for.” He thought for a moment she was going to tell him to get lost, but instead she leane...
I've knitted myself a hat, it's plum red with an appealing lace pattern, I figured that a few air holes would be nice now that it's spring. I put it on and feel like a cranberry in the snow, and I wonder if they can see me from the moon. Me and the G...
So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no imme...
That year, when the trees burned the fire of late summer into their leaves and the ground mist was a ghost of the river, long and wet and cold, the aunt looked from her windows to the walls around her and imagined another winter inside them. She bega...
…I’ve come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don’t, and can’t, understand. What’s mysterious, ambiguous, inexplicable. What doesn’t fit into a story, what doesn’t have a story. Glint of brightness on a bar...
