Amy Lane

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 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.

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__etouched 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.

Don__ worry, due__ne,_ He murmured lowly....__ho__ 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. __t__ elfish, the feminine nounfor __ther equal half_. You are my other. My everything._--Wounded(Bracken and Cory)

I blew through her like baby__ breath through a dandelion, and my soulleft its mark on hers. Forever. In one night, I__ 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.

Green heard her voice, murmuring,and Adrian__, murmuring back. Something inside of him made an actualglass-cracking noise__nd 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.__e heard that._ Blissa said, sweetly.__eard what?_ He asked, genuinely surprised.__eard 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. __ut that smell, right there,_ He murmured, __hat 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)

You__e here!_ She repeated, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legsaround his hips. He__ dropped his bags as she__ 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)

I looked at Adrian__ eyes, beautiful, mesmerizing. Not human. I didn__ feellonely at all. __ou__l take me places?_ I asked. His answer was important, eventhough my decision was already made.__ou can__ imagine where we__l go._ He said, sincerely.

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.

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!

Honestly__ho puts a hamburger next to diet tofu curry unless they__e trying to buy your soul?

Oh__nd you need to work on making my opinion more important than Josh__, too. I know it__ a stretch__e__ your most intimate relationship to date, but when you__e balls deep in my ass, I__ prefer you not be wondering if it counts as a workout.

I__e loved him since I__e known him, Mrs. Daniels. He just finally stopped fighting.

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.

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

You're the fantasy I never knew I had.

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