And of course I'm a chauvinist, but it isn't my fault." "It isn't?" "No, Jack was born first and I share his genes. I can't help it if he infected me inside the womb." Briony burst out laughing. "I should have known that would be your excuse.

I know I burn for you.Even in my sleep, the sleep of our people where there can be no thought,I burn for you.

I can't help it, Kate. And I'm laughing at me. I feel like one of those sappy men who run around with a big grin on his face all the time. I feel like grinning all the time around you, and it's so idiotic.

Betrayal is never easy to handle and there is no right way to accept it.

You're the kind of man my mother warned me about.

Don't cater to stupidity.

She didn't want soft and gentle. She needed his rough possession, claiming her, branding her, taking her in a firestorm of heat and flame that would end the world around them, leaving them nothing but ashes, clean and fierce and forever welded together.