As he closed the door he said over his shoulder, "Because you're a good lass." A heavy sigh. "And I'm no' a good man.

Valhalla on the right. Paradise regained on the left. Stuck between a Godiva truffle and a chocolate eclair. Between a rock and a very hard place. Two very hard places from the looks of it.

I kept it to remind me that although there is evil, there is sometimes beauty and light. You, Jillian. You were always my light.

Kid, you might just annoy me into killing you.

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.

We see ourselves in other people’s eyes. It’s the nature of the human race; we are a species of reflection, hungry for it in every facet of our existence. Maybe that’s why vampires seem so monstrous to us—they cast no reflection. Parents, if they’re good ones, reflect the wonder of our existence and the success we can become. Friends, well chosen, show us pretty pictures of ourselves, and encourage us to grow into them. The Beast shows us the very worst in ourselves and makes us know it’s true .

I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.