22
" Sorry, I got hung up or I’d have been here earlier. I made sure I made it for closing, though. I didn’t want the streets to suffer if you walked alone.”
A glance at him showed his lips twitching. Humor, a new facet to my knight in leather armor; one I liked, given my oftentimes sarcastic attitude towards life. He wore the same leather duster of the previous evening, and, once again, I enviously admired it. Unable to resist, I reached out a hand and stroked its supple surface, feeling a thrill that my hand strayed so close to his actual body. “It’s so soft,” I murmured.
“Not for long, if you keep stroking it,” he drawled. "
― Eve Langlais , Lucifer's Daughter (Princess of Hell, #1)
36
" Then he made the mistake of looking into her eyes and froze. Her expression was so open, so full of tenderness and longing as well as heat that he almost balked. This was supposed to be about closure, about having the goodbye they’d never gotten last time. How was he supposed to leave after if she gave herself to him this completely? Her hand came up to cradle the side of his face, her thumb stroking back and forth across his jaw, her touch gentle and loving. “Need you,” she murmured,
It was good. Even better than he remembered. Liam buried his face in the side of her neck and sucked in a breath, struggling to hang on. Being cradled in Honor’s arms, buried to the hilt inside her while she opened her body and heart to him was the most incredible thing in the world. How the f*&^ was he going to walk away later? Without warning his eyes began to sting. As though she sensed how close he was to coming unglued, Honor murmured to him and pressed kisses to the side of his face, her hand urging his head to turn toward her. Liam shook his head, unable to bear that final level of intimacy when he knew this was their last time. Keeping his face in her neck he fought back the swell of emotion and began to move, a slow, shallow rocking motion that was more profound than words could ever be. He loved her. Would always love her, but it wasn’t enough because some things couldn’t be undone and he just couldn’t let her in the way he had before. All they had left was this bittersweet farewell, and he was going to make it memorable. .... A lump settled in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut, torn between the excruciating pleasure swelling inside him and the need to see her face as he took her this last time. In the end, his heart won out. Powerless to stop himself, he lifted his head and looked down at her. Anguish sliced through his chest when he saw the tears glistening in her beautiful eyes. Don’t. Don’t cry. Shit, he didn’t want either of them to hurt anymore. He was sick of hurting. That’s why he was ending it all tonight. With a low sound of regret he covered her mouth with his, his tongue sliding against hers as he took her. Honor kissed him back deep and slow...
Cupping her cheek with his free hand he gave her everything he had left to give, allowing his emotional shields to drop for these final moments.
She ran her fingertips up and down his back in a soothing motion, her body limp and pliant beneath his, legs still wrapped around him. And all of a sudden he felt like crying. He felt too much, was in too deep again.
He didn’t know what to say to make this any easier. After what they’d just shared he was more conflicted than ever about what to do.
“I’ll miss you,” she murmured, and he caught the slight catch in her voice. Ah, fu&%. He gritted his teeth. It would be so much easier if they could just hate each other. For a moment he considered saying something to make her do exactly that, but couldn’t. Even he wasn’t enough of an a**hole to end things that way. And that look on her face… Against his better judgment, Liam sat back down on the edge of the bed and pulled her into his arms. Honor went willingly into his embrace, pressing her face to his chest as she hugged him tight in return.
“I’ll miss you too.”
Dammit, he should never have come here tonight. “I wish it could be different, but I just… I can’t do this anymore.” I’ll always love you but I can’t afford to let you back in again. “I’m sorry. "
― Kaylea Cross , Collateral Damage (Bagram Special Ops #5)
37
" He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”
His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: “My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself,” continued the king, “who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. "
― Jonathan Swift , Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
39
" Noticing Cooper watching me, I paused mid-chew.
“You really are happy, aren’t you, baby?”
“Yes,” I said, stroking his shirt and feeling giddy. I’d never imagined I would share anything like this day with anyone, let alone someone as beautiful as Cooper. “Are you happy?”
“If you’re happy, I’m happy. That’s how men are. They like when their women are content.”
“Did your dad tell you that?”
“Oh, yeah. Pop hasn’t stayed married all these years by being a fool. "
― Bijou Hunter , Damaged and the Beast (Damaged, #1)