Life is too hard, too much to handle. Nobody told me there’d be days like these. How could nobody tell me there’d be days like these? How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid?

I didn’t ask. Some things are better left unsaid. He looked at me and I shivered. I never get enough of him. Never will. He lives. I breathe. I want. Him. Always. Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever. Later we would go to bed, and when he rose over me, dark and vast and eternal, I’d know joy.

It's a sponge and I'm a sponge and for a second there all our sponge parts are one and I don't just have square pants, everything about me is squarish because I'm part of a wall.

We have to save the world," I reminded him. He reached for me. "The world can wait. I can't.

I'm a bartender. I like recipes. They're concretes. Was the drink recipe for seduction one shot charm and two shots self-deception, shaken, not stirred?

Just one time before I turn into the villain of this piece, just one time before I become the fourth and final Unseelie prince, I want to be her Highlander. And her hero.

As I moved deeper into the room, his gaze dropped to my feet, and worked its way back to my face. I was wearing faded jeans, boots, and a snug pink Juicy T-shirt I got on sale at TJ Maxx last summer that said I’m a Juicy girl. “I bet you are,” he murmured.