Richelle Mead

What were you thinking?" I demanded once we were moving to the music. I was trying to ignore his hands. "Do you know how much trouble you may have gotten me in?"Adrian grinned. "Nah. They all feel bad for you. You'll achieve martyrdom after dancing with a mean, wicked vampire. Job security with the Alchemists.

The only thing true about what you just said was the storybook damsel part - and that only because you're pretty enough to be one.

Do you think I'm pretty?__e regarded me with utter seriousness, like he always did. "I think you're beautiful._"Beautiful?_"You are so beautiful, it hurts me sometimes.

Longing surged up within me. I wanted it. Oh God, I wanted it. I didn't want to hear Jerome chastise me for my "all lowlifes, all the time" seduction policy. I wanted to come home and tell someone about my day. I wanted to go out dancing on the weekends. I wanted to take vacations together. I wanted someone to hold me when I was upset, when the ups and downs of the world pushed me too far. I wanted someone to love.

Stop fighting me!" he said, trying to pull on the arm he held.He was in a precarious position himself, straddling the rail as he tried to lean over far enough to get me and actually hold onto me.__et go of me!_ I yelled back.But he was too strong and managed to haul most of me over the rail, enough so that I wasn__ in total danger of falling again.See, here__ the thing. In that moment before I let go, I really had been contemplating my death. I__ come to terms with it and accepted it. I also, however, had known Dimitri might do something exactly like this. He was just that fast and that good. That was why I was holding my stake in the hand that was dangling free.I looked him in the eye. "I will always love you."Then I plunged the stake into his chest.It wasn__ as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one."That__ what I was supposed to say. . ._ he gasped out.Those were his last words.

She sat up, cheeks flushed and golden hair tousled. She was so beautiful that it made my soul ache. I always wished desperately that I could paint her in these moments and immortalize that look in her eyes. There was a softness in them that I rarely saw at other times, a total and complete vulnerability in someone who was normally so guarded and analytical in the rest of her life. But although I was a decent painter, capturing her on canvas was beyond my skill. She collected her brown blouse and buttoned it up, hiding the brightness of turquoise lace with the conservative attire she liked to armor herself in. She__ done an overhaul of her bras in the last month, and though I was always sad to see them disappear, it made me happy to know they were there, those secret spots of color in her life.

My God, Sage. Your eyes. How have I never noticed them?"That uncomfortable feeling was spreading over me again. "What about them?""The color," he breathed. "When you stand in the light. They're amazing... like molten gold. I could paint those..." He reached toward me but then pulled back. "They're beautiful. You're beautiful.

Rose was so full of life and passion that sometimes she seemed more human than I was.

Smiling, I cut across the quadrangle toward the commons. I felt better about life than I had in a very long time. We could do this, Lissa and me. We could do this together.

Vampires. Honestly, they're like children sometimes.

But I couldn't help myself, couldn't help the way I felt as I recalled the bliss and rush of a vampire's bite.

I get in that kind of situation all the time, Comrade. It's not a big deal." Anger replaced my fear. I didn't like being treated like a child. "Stop calling me that. You don't even know what you're talking about." "Sure I do. I had to do a report on the R.S.S.R. last year.

Sometimes you wake up from a dream. Sometimes you wake up in a dream. And sometimes, every once in a while, you wake up in someone else's dream.

If I let myself love you, I won't throw myself in front of her. I'll throw myself in front of you.

You can't force love, I realized. It's there or it isn't. If it's not there, you've got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you've got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.

Well, that depends, I suppose. I heard someone once say that men dance the same way they have sex. So, if you want everyone here to think you're the kind of guy who just sits around and_" He stood up. "Let's dance.

You act young," he said, "because you are young. But you know things, Roza. Things people older than you don't even know. That day...." I knew instantly which day he referred to. The one up against the wall. "You were right, about how I fight to stay in control. No one else has ever figured that out- and it scared me. You scare me.""Why? Don't you want anyone to know?"He shrugged. "Whether they know that fact or not doesn't matter. What matters is that someone- that you- know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend.""Like Tasha.""Tasha Ozera is an amazing woman. She's beautiful and she's brave. But she doesn't-""She doesn't get you," I finished.He nodded. "I knew that. But I still wanted the relationship. I knew it would be easy and that she could take me away from you. I thought she could make me forget you."I'd thought the same thing about Mason. "But she couldn't.""Yes. And, so.....that's a problem.

It doesn__ matter,_ said Adrian, smiling. He rested a hand on my shoulder. __ome things are worth the trouble.