Cursing herself, she said, "I'm going to man up here. I'm going to so be twenty-one. You're not going to believe how tight in the head I'm going to be. Really. For real.

"Say the word, Qhuinn. Do it and I'll spend the night with you.""Better yet, why don't you just kiss me..."

When I want you to beg, I'll tell you.

In quick succession, Qhuinn reviewed his answers: No, of course not, the knife was acting of its own volition. I was actually trying to stop it...No, I only meant to give him a shave...No, I didn't realize that slicing open someone's jugular was going to lead to death.

It's not big," Veck said, "but it's flawless. That was important to me. I wanted to give you something...flawless

Because when I looked at you across that table at the diner, no one else existed. And whether or not anything happens between you and me, it took meeting you to show me what I was missing.

It was a universal truth among males that anytime you saw a guy get it in the nuts, you experienced a shot of phantom pain in your own croquet set. As Lassiter crouched beside the Brother’s pretzel of a body, he was feeling a little nauseous himself, and he took a moment to cup what hung between his legs—just to reassure the boys downstairs that however much of an iconoclast he was, some things were sacred.