I was terrified of my weakness, of my sharp tongue, ofmy every flaw. I was terrified that this moment, my chance tolive in happiness for however short a time we may have had,would be ruined because I was simply not carved out of thesame wood as happiness, and that my grain was too twistedto ever take its form.

My knitting is simple", he said again. Ï can make anything you want with it, but it will always be simple.

hope could betray you—but if you had no hope, life could actuallysurprise you in the best of ways.

I’ve loved him since I’ve known him, Mrs. Daniels. He just finally stopped fighting.

Honestly—who puts a hamburger next to diet tofu curry unless they’re trying to buy your soul?

Oh—and you need to work on making my opinion more important than Josh’s, too. I know it’s a stretch—he’s your most intimate relationship to date, but when you’re balls deep in my ass, I’d prefer you not be wondering if it counts as a workout.

He's MINE", I howled. "Mine! And I'm his! You knew this when you slunk into our bed. I told you at the beginning, and I thought you understood, well, you understand now, don't you?"He had the nerve to extend a placating hand to me, and I wished so violently for a weapon, I were not surprised to hear the clatter of a knife falling out of the cupboard.I turned my head to the side and spat instead. "I told you 'no', dammit. I told you I'd follow him to the ends of the fucking earth, and I will, and you thought that if you took him, you'd take the way I felt. Well, you can't! Hammer and me - we're twined together, like rose bushes or wrought iron, and you can't untangle us, and if you did, you'd have to break us! Don't you see what you've done? You tried to break Hammer! He's mine! My whole life, the only thing I ever wanted were him, and you tried to break him! And why? So you could have me? You don't care for me!

Sex was lovely. Sex was sublime. Sex was flesh and cock and suck and fuck and come. This night sex was starlight. Sex was oxygen. Sex was us, and we were beautiful, beautiful and perfect in each other's arms.

You’re here!” She repeated, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legsaround his hips. He’d dropped his bags as she’d ran, and now he cupped her bottom in his large hands...His heart gave a giant thump, all the way down from his chest to his stomach,and as she smiled up at him he lowered his head and devoured her mouth,smile and all. Her lips were just as warm, and just as soft as he remembered, and her mouth tasted like peaches and cinnamon and Corinne Carol-Anne and without thought he pushed her back against the hallway wall and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her as though all their time apart would disappear in that frantic mating of tongue and lips and teeth. He wanted to take her into himself, all of her, and keep her warm and safe and happy, just like this moment when sheburst with joy, just to see him.--Wounded(Green and Cory, after being apart)

Green heard her voice, murmuring,and Adrian’s, murmuring back. Something inside of him made an actualglass-cracking noise—and before he could convince himself that that it washis imagination, Blissa and three of the other nymphs danced through thehallway and into the living room.“We heard that.” Blissa said, sweetly.“Heard what?” He asked, genuinely surprised.“Heard your heart breaking.” Said Grace.

He leaned forward then and put his face in the crook of my neck, so he could smell the warmth rising from it. His nose touched my skin, just enough to make me shiver.When he spoke again, it was right next to my ear, and his voice was deep, and his breath moved the fine hairs on my ear, starting a vibration deep within my eardrum. “But that smell, right there,” He murmured, “That smell is all you. I love that smell too. I want to wear that smell on my skin and roll around in it. I want to live in that smell alone."--Wounded(Bracken to Cory)

Don’t worry, due’ane,” He murmured lowly....“Who’s Dewey Anne.” I asked him, voice gruff. He was so familiar, this Bracken, but so strange, naked next to me. I could touchhim, I realized with wonder. I could run my hands from his flank to his shoulder, and he would welcome the touch because he was mine.You are.” He whispered, and I met his eyes. “It’s elfish, the feminine nounfor ‘other equal half’. You are my other. My everything.”--Wounded(Bracken and Cory)

I looked at Adrian’s eyes, beautiful, mesmerizing. Not human. I didn’t feellonely at all. “You’ll take me places?” I asked. His answer was important, eventhough my decision was already made.“You can’t imagine where we’ll go.” He said, sincerely.

I blew through her like baby’s breath through a dandelion, and my soulleft its mark on hers. Forever. In one night, I’d bound her too me for as longas she lived, and I had no words to tell her.When I woke the next night, to see her there, above me, the relief radiatingfrom every line of her body, I thought it was more of a miracle than myfirst rising.

I will love you forever,” I murmured, and he stroked the hair off of my forehead.I will hold you to that.” His face was grim and his voice was sober—hetouched my handprint of chaos as he said it, and I knew in my bones that it was a solemn vow, and not a sweet or a kind offering of love at all. Green would make me live if he had to crack the foundations of the world.

What must it be like to have such faith in the world, in plans, in your own ability to control your fate? It was contagious, that's what it was. I could not help it. I caught his hope like a plague.

I was asleep for almost ten years. And then this big goober with all these fucking weird animals moved into my house, and I was suddenly awake.

They made love until Chris had to leave for the airport, without sleeping at all. After Chris had left, wearing wrinkled jeans and Xander’s sweat and seed on his skin, Xander flopped back onto the bed and looked miserably at the clock.

That night Tommy kissed him and eased his way into Chase’s body so gently that when Chase came, his vision washed in white, not red, and it did for him what sex with Tommy always did for him: set him free and let him fly.

So, he, uhm, all ac/ac, or a little ac/dc?" she asked, blushing, and Chase's grin about swallowed his face."He claims to be ac/dc," he said, watching her face light up completely.

He'd always known that shit rolled downhill, but he never knew tears did the same thing.

'I can get mad all I want, but they don't mean it. They love me. Sometimes, some creatures, when they get cornered, they forget who loves them and think everybody's the enemy. You don't just leave them alone, cold and afraid, because their instinct takes over and it's wrong. You don't if you give a shit, you know?'

...every vertebrae on his back was a prayer bead under my hands.

The army don’t teach enlisted men how to fly,” I said, trying to hold onto my dignity. “We gotta do that for ourselves.

It takes a truly great man to see that he’s been wrong and to apologize for it, even in the face of the obvious.

It looks like two alpacas fucking, mostly," he said apologetically. "Of course, sometimes, the boy can't get his boy parts past the girl's furry ass, and he needs a little help, so then it looks like two alpacas fucking while their handler's giving the one on top a handjob.

Krissa, tough Lady Krissa, who had stood by impassively while Areau vomited out ten years of bitter addiction, wiped her eyes and offered Areau Mrs. Wrinkle’s pie in comfort, and it suddenly occurred to Areau in the strangest, most dreamlike of ways, that his pain was not the only pain on the planet.

Rico laughed a little, feeling helpless. "Is your life always this...I don't know-""Tide of chaos washing ashore on the beach of what the fuck? Yesh.

The scarf could go on and on and on and on, and it could be the harlot-red banner of shame that wrapped him up and kept him warm when the nights grew lonely and cold.

Hammer does not think he will make it through this next winter. His breath comes short in his chest, and it takes much effort for him to get up and dressed. My body is still creaky and sound, but with every labor of his breath, I think that my heart will not endure. Enduring were Hammer’s gift, not mine, and I will not endure a life in which he does not laugh by my side and touch my hand, wish for the best things for me, and rejoice when I have them. My sturdy, blessed, stoic Hammer—how can life be, without him?

If you cannot see the fineness in my Hammer, you'd best look at him with better eyes.

Hammer", I finished lamely, as he waited patiently for my thoughts to find their voice, "we have got to find better words for the things we have in our hearts.""Words seem to be weak things," he murmured into my hair, and I could only hope our hearts would prove stronger.

I know these are only dreams. I know these days are long past. I wake to a dream in which Hammer’s breath has stopped, and mine with it, and hearts have gone to a quiet sunny meadow with the sweetest little cottage in the middle, with a millwheel and a stream. Our bodies will lie tangled until they become earth, like roses twining so closely there is no beginning and no end, and only the shades of beauty that were their growing.Every dream I ever had as a child has come true, simply because Hammer loved me. Perhaps this one will too.

You're the fantasy I never knew I had.

I tried very hard not to ponder the horrible irony that I was too ugly to love, and too ugly not to violate.

Okay. Some things were made of hope. But not this thing. This thing he was doing, that was made of surrender. He did it anyway. At least when you surrendered, you had time to kiss the people you loved good-bye.