You love me,” he said. “That’s all I need to know.” “You always say the right thing,” Savannah told him, her eyes so filled with love that he almost wept. “Sometimes it takes you awhile to get to it, but you always get there, and what you say is always worth waiting for.

When you sit that way, you look kind of like a beach ball with a head,” he continued. “Your haircut is really, really bad, I’m probably going to lose my job for helping you this way, and I’m dying to fuck you.” He glanced at her. “That honest enough for you?

I’m going to carry you now,” he told her, “so we can move even faster. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Any response from you is unnecessary and unwelcome.

Savannah, I’ve been talking my ass off for more than an hour now, telling you shit no one’s ever heard anything about, hoping that I’ll say something, Jesus God, anything that will convince you to have sex with me.

Do you think,” she said, “instead of having sex, we could make love?”“I’d love that,” Ken whispered.

If you want, I can carry you—” “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Let’s go.”He’d said that wrong. He should have said, “I want to carry you.

My favorite color is you.

Ah, God, Lys" he breathed, and she opened her eyes to look up at him. She was the love of his heart, his true partner in both work and life, and the idea of losing her to the violence of the world they lived in scared the living shit out of him.But her smile lit her eyes, her face, and he pushed the darkness away and let himself grin back at her like the damn fool that he was. This moment-now-was perfect, and he wasn't going to let his fears interfere.

You have no idea how much I appreciate your friendship,” Jules said. Sam held out several bills. “Yeah, actually I do,” he said. “It’s probably as much as I appreciate yours.

I know the M-word makes you nervous, but yeah. I'm talking about the big, permanent friendship. A little different from what Joe and Charles had, though. See, I want to be the kind of best friends who make love every night, who share all their darkest secrets and favorite jokes, and maybe even someday make babies together. I know that kind of friendship requires hard work, but you know, I'm pretty good at hard work.~ Tom Paoletti, "The Unsung Hero

You know, Savannah, if you cry, I won’t tell anyone,’ Ken said quietly. ‘I promise.

I believe strongly that my books are entertainment. I hope you might learn a thing or two while reading them, but first and foremost, my job is to entertain you. If I’m waving a flag in Hot Target, it’s the same flag I’ve always waved in all my books—the American flag. And that’s a flag that’s supposed to stand for acceptance and understanding. For freedom for all—and not just freedom for all Americans, but freedom for all of the diverse and wonderful people living on this planet; freedom to live their lives according to their definitions of freedom. It’s a flag that’s supposed to stand for real American values like honor and honesty and peace and love and hope.

This wasn't Weirdville, this was fricking Wonderland. Alice here was all grow up, but she was still chowing down on too much of that psychedelic mushroom.

As Ian popped the lock and opened the car door, he turned to Phoebe. “Can you do me a favour?”She immediately stepped toward him, fully embracing their new mature relationship. “Of course.”Ian looked pointedly over his own shoulder and said, “Tell me the truth. Does this car make my glowing ass look fat?”She’d naturally followed the direction of his gaze, but now she looked up, hard, into his eyes. And she smiled back at him despite herself. She even laughed. “You’re an idiot.”“When things get too serious, I get a rash.”She pointedly looked back down at his nether regions, despite the fact doing so made her blush. Still, she spoke coolly, dryly. “Not on your ass.”If Ian believed in love, that would’ve been it for him. Instantly. Enthrallingly. Eternally. Instead, he just laughed. “Thank God for that. See if there’s anything remotely clothinglike in the backseat or the trunk.

Then it’s a deal, we’re friends.”[…]“Can we just make one conditional rule here? That if we get into a situation where we know—absolutely—that we’re going to die, we can have—“She pulled her hand away. “Don’t say it!”He did. “Sex.”She glared her disbelief. “You are such and asshole!”“I am,” Ian agreed. I’m afraid that accepting me for who I am comes with the territory when talking friendship.”“Stay in the shadows, asshole,” she said, then turned to stalk up the lawn toward the deck.“Thank you,” he said as he headed for the shrubs. “I appreciate our open-minded acceptance of my asshole-ishness.”And he wasn’t sure, but he could’ve sword that he heard Phoebe laugh.

I’m not the one who kissed you in the bathroom. In case you’re thinking I forgot about that, or somehow missed it, or …”“Kind of hard to miss,” Ian agreed. “Your lips, mine. A distinct smacking sound. Yup, that was me kissing you. Still, it was short—quickly over and done. A kiss good-bye. The subtext was I hope we don’t die, but if we do, it was nice meeting you. Not at all like that under-the-dock kiss.” He paused. “The one where you jumped me. The first time. So far.” He narrowed his eyes at her, much the way she’d done to him. “Naturally I’m suspicious. Did you intentionally leave my clothes behind?

As Ian looked at her, he felt something in his chest slip and shift. The pressure came with a blood-tingling rush of triumph and satisfaction, pride and a deeply burning sense of possessiveness. His inner caveman warrior had been awakened and wanted to rush around the room, peeing into the corners, marking it—and her—as his own, while shouting Mine! and randomly smashing things for emphasis.But he knew that was he was feeling was the equivalent of emotional and hormonal indigestion. He hadn’t done this in a long time. And he particularly hadn’t done it with a woman he liked as much as this one. In fact, he’d never had sex with anyone that he genuinely liked as much as he liked Phoebe.

Why does it not surprise me that you talk during sex?

What she wanted was right there, between them, pressed against her stomach—so big and accessible and user-friendly—neatly covered and ready to go.

We shouldn’t do this,” he said again as he looked up into her eyes. “But, God, I want to. I just …” He closed his eyes, exhaled hard. “Pheeb. I’m a bad bet. There’s no future here. I know this feels big, this thing between us, right now it feels huge—and shh, don’t make a dick joke, I’m serious. But it’s not going to feel as big or special tomorrow, or, shit, even later tonight. I mean, yeah, I can make you feel good. I know it. And God knows you can make me … Jesus, you’re so beautiful, I just —”She stopped him there, again, with a kiss, and just like that, it was as if something snapped.

I figured it was probably best for me to leave that bicycle back there for a real emergency.

This is what we, in the con business, call making a spectacle of ourselves. Let’s try to avoid that from now on.”“Except […] Mr. No-Sex-in-the-Bathrooms is going to describe two probably drunk people who staggered in. Plus, he thinks I’m a prostitute. We can double down on that by …” She stopped him, glancing back into the store throught the big plate-glass windows. Ian looked, too, and sure enough, the clerk was still watching them warily.“Perfect, she said, and the made what was, absolutely, the international two-handed gesture for sexual intercourse. She then added a couple of exaggerated hip thrusts, saying, “I want to make this absolutely clear, because this guy’s kind of an idiot.” She then rubbed her fingers together, after which she held out her hand, palm up, as if to say Pay me.Ian cracked up. “That’s actually kind of scary. Sex with a mime. Do I have to pay extra to make sure you don’t do the trapped-in-a-box thing while we’re doing it?

… now that I’m stuck here for an undetermined amount of time, it seems beyond foolish not to let me help.” She took a bite for emphasis. “You could at least let me make you a sandwich,” she added balefully through her mouthful.“That was me being respectful of your law degree,” Ian said.

[Prince Stefan’s] family was of Eastern European descent, with some real royalty thrown in via a connection to Vlad the Impaler—who hung from a branch that Ian wouldn’t kept secret had the family tree been growing in his yard.

[describing Aaron, hero's brother] His hair was shorter and lighter, and his eyes were more green than blue. And even though he was tall, he wasn’t quite super-sized. He was more sculpted, more … elegant. more slender and beautiful and less raw-boned. Less Stone Age and more Bronze Age—but till the kind of man who enjoyed living in a cave.

From her vantage point, looking up at [Ian] through the water-spotted and slightly blurry lenses of her glasses, he was quite literally larger than life. Right at that moment, with his hands up on his head, his muscular chest bare, and his boxer shorts clinging to him in a most revealing way, water matting the hair on his chest and his legs and his eyelashes, he was ridiculously attractive. Even with his more conventionally handsome brother standing next to him.Of course the fact that Aaron was looking down at her with unconcealed dislike in his pretty hazel eyes might’ve had something to with it, as if she weren’t a person but instead a pile of excrement left on his pool deck by a wart-covered troll with an intestinal ailment.

Was it really called dry humping, if they did it underwater? Probably not. Crying shame that they both had their jeans on, because this was definitely one of those adrenaline-fuelled moments of passion with a total loss of inhibition, where need and desire trumped all reason.

But one look at Wildcard's face, and he knew there was trouble. Problem? he signaled.Wildcard responded with an obscene gesture that more than conveyed his opinion that not only was this a problem, but it was a big problem...."Okay". That was not anywhere near the complete reaming Muldoon imagined "We'll take a different route down.""We could", Wildcard agreed. "But they've got a prisoner.."Oh man, that hurt. Dream op to nightmare...Muldoon gritted his teeth and considered his options."Holy fuck", Wildcard said. "When I tell you that a stupid ass French photog is going to turn this perfect op into a total clusterfuck, what you say sir, is 'Oh, holy fuck'. If this isn't the time to use your full adult vocabulary, Lieutenant, I honestly don't know what is".

He's getting older," Charles said darkly. "Shall I hit him with my walker or my oxygen tank?

Are you one of his teamm