“When he put the old-fashioned mechanical toy on her palm, she stopped breathing. It was a tiny representation of an atom, complete with colored ball bearings standing in for neutrons, protons, and on the outside, arranged on arcs of fine wire, electrons. Turning the key on the side made the electrons move, what she’d thought were ball bearings actually finely crafted spheres of glass that sparked with color. A brilliant, thoughtful, wonderful gift for a physics major.“Why magnesium?” she asked, identifying the atomic number of the light metal. His hand on her jaw, his mouth on her own. “Because it’s beautifully explosive, just like my X.”

“When he put the old-fashioned mechanical toy on her palm, she stopped breathing. It was a tiny representation of an atom, complete with colored ball bearings standing in for neutrons, protons, and on the outside, arranged on arcs of fine wire, electrons. Turning the key on the side made the electrons move, what she’d thought were ball bearings actually finely crafted spheres of glass that sparked with color. A brilliant, thoughtful, wonderful gift for a physics major.“Why magnesium?” she asked, identifying the atomic number of the light metal. His hand on her jaw, his mouth on her own. “Because it’s beautifully explosive, just like my X.”

“You do realize this makes your wings even more unique.""Are you saying you shot me as a cosmetic procedure?”

“The longer you live, the more mistakes you make. And the more sorrows you carry.”

“How long have you been with Raphael?”“You ask a lot of questions for a dead woman.”“What can I say? I prefer to die well-informed.”-Venom and Elena”

“You’re in my every breath and every thought, intertwined so deep inside me that love’s not a strong enough word—you have my devotion, your name branded on my soul, my wolf yours to command. A hundred years? It’ll never be enough. I want eternity.”

“Some women,” Dahariel said in that same hard tone devoid of any hint of humanity, “getunder a man’s skin until digging them out makes you bleed.”

“What can I say? I prefer to die well informed.”

“For the first time in forever, he was stunned to silence. Not by her words, but by the tenderness in her hands, the worry in her eyes. He was an archangel. He’d been wounded far, far worse and shrugged it off. But then, there had been no woman with sun kissed by the sunset and eyes of storm gray to tear into him for daring to get himself hurt.”

“Option 1: Attempt to back out.Probable result: Death after painful torture.Option 2: Do the job and hope.Probable result: Death but probably no torture (good)”

“It was, she had to admit, some kind of wonderful to be kissed so deliciously by the only mand who had dared play with her cat with the intention of winning.”

“It was, she had to admit, some kind of wonderful to be kissed so deliciously by the only man who had dared play with her cat with the intention of winning.”