He knows what I'm thinking. Always. We're connected. The atoms between us ferry messages back and forth.

Grief shared was grief lessened.

He was on me before my brain processed the fact that he was coming for me.

When Christian pushes into the brick wall of the building catty-corner to the rear of BB&B—first left on the Dark Zone side—and disappears, I melt down in a fit of the giggles. I toss a rock at the spot where he vanished. It bounces off the brick and clatters to the cobblestone. I'm feeling twenty shades of Harry Potter's train station, especially when he pokes his head out of the wall and says impatiently, "Come on, lass. This is hardly my favorite place to be.

Hard. Fast. Deep. When I'm done you'll know you're mine.

I flash him number seventeen of my thirty-five Looks of Death.

raking a hand through his hair, he forced his attention to the text she'd left on the coffee table, refusing to dwell on the disconcerting fact that a part of him had taken one look at the lass in such proximity to his bed and said simply: Mine