24
" On Loving a Stranger:Perhaps trying, despite it seeming too idealistic - to apply a speck of your imagination and generate 10 background stories a day about the people you meet - is what could help to see that it might be in fact one of the important things in life to care for. I am fully aware of how unnatural the task and believing in it could seem but my own experience has brought me to a point where i could defend this idea (and not merely an idea but also a posture in practise) tirelessly. having experienced the exuberance and richness that can be ones personal gain from looking behind facades, showing love where it's hardest to do (and yes, it can be incredibly difficult), has taught me that the task could be an incipient of ones own integral transfiguration in addition to a gentle move towards another. Remembering how undeserving we ourselves often are of this kind of gentleness (yet very much in need of, no matter what we think of ourselves or the world) makes it easier to sacrifice the time and patience to think in a considerate manner of another, even a stranger. I see this as one of the channels into the more unfathomable depths of life: every human being (i like to think that even a fragment of them) is a new story with thousands of nuances told by life itself. To see, behind hideous apperances, another human that is not too much different from ourselves may open us up to a closer understanding of other people, ourselves, situations and then help as obtain resilience useful in debilitating times. Love itself, this way, can turn into an inner resource, a little sun somewhere between your ribs, and if needed into a form of true fruitful rebellion. "
25
" I let my sword slip to the ground, and for the second time I stood unarmed in the presence of werewolves.
Kresh put his lips to my forehead, and my skin burned beneath his kiss. When his hands repositioned to take me by the waist, my breathing—already shallow—ceased entirely. Then his lips fell on mine and I was suddenly everything he claimed me to be—his mate, his wife, his world.
The taste of him seemed mysteriously new and old at the same time. Every bit of tension eased as if internally I had come home again, and yet a sense of foreignness made our connection a sweet venture. My breast was afire as he continued to grasp my hips, keeping me close. I burned for him as if vampire venom were coursing through every inch of me.
The man was a constellation of suns in my desire, unlike Thaddeus who hardly equaled a speck of stardust. The thought of that coward reminded me of grim news. It took every bit of willpower I possessed to tear my lips away from what they craved, and yet I remained a submissive puddle in this werewolf’s arms. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich ,
26
" This was all splendid stuff for Luciaphils; it was amazing how at a first glance she recognised everybody. The gallery, too, was full of dears and darlings of a few weeks' standing, and she completed a little dinner-party for next Tuesday long before she had made the circuit. All the time she kept Stephen by her side, looked over his catalogue, put a hand on his arm to direct his attention to some picture, took a speck of alien material off his sleeve, and all the time the entranced Adele felt increasingly certain that she had plumbed the depth of the adorable situation. Her sole anxiety was as to whether Stephen would plumb it too. He might--though he didn't look like it--welcome these little tokens of intimacy as indicating something more, and when they were alone attempt to kiss her, and that would ruin the whole exquisite design. Luckily his demeanour was not that of a favoured swain; it was, on the other hand, more the demeanour of a swain who feared to be favoured, and if that shy thing took fright, the situation would be equally ruined. . . . To think that the most perfect piece of Luciaphilism was dependent on the just perceptions of Stephen! As the three made their slow progress, listening to Lucia's brilliant identifications, Adele willed Stephen to understand; she projected a perfect torrent of suggestion towards his mind. He must, he should understand. . . .Fervent desire, so every psychist affirms, is never barren. It conveys something of its yearning to the consciousness to which it is directed, and there began to break on the dull male mind what had been so obvious to the finer feminine sense of Adele. Once again, and in the blaze of publicity, Lucia was full of touches and tweaks, and the significance of them dawned, like some pale, austere sunrise, on his darkened senses. The situation was revealed, and he saw it was one with which he could easily deal. His gloomy apprehensions brightened, and he perceived that there would be no need, when he went to stay at Riseholme next, to lock his bedroom-door, a practice which was abhorrent to him, for fear of fire suddenly breaking out in the house. Last night he had had a miserable dream about what had happened when he failed to lock his door at The Hurst, but now he dismissed its haunting. These little intimacies of Lucia's were purely a public performance." Lucia, we must be off," he said loudly and confidently. " Pepino will wonder where we are. "