Heavily and hypnotically,with her soul flattening itself back like the ears of a hissing cat,Kizzy leaned in and drank of Jack Husk's full,moist mouth,and his red,red lips were hungry against hers,drinking her in return.Their eyes closed.Fingers clutched at collars and hair,at the picnic blanket,at the grass.And as they sank down,pinning their shadows beneath them,the horizon tipped on its side,and slowly,thickly,hour by hour,the day spilled out and ebbed away. It was Kizzy's first kiss, and maybe it was her last, and it was delicious.

I will do just as you wish,' said no cat ever.

It didn't escape Karou's notice that he found subtle ways of touching her.

As for Ellai, she told her sister what had passed, and Nitid wept, and her tears fell to earth and became chimaera, children of regret.

I miss sunrise even more. The green scent of dawn in the forest? The color blushing back into the world, different every day.

Kissing can ruin lives. Lips touch sometimes teeth clash. New hunger is born with a throb and caution falls away. A cursed girl with lips still moist from her first kiss might feel suddenly wild like a little monsoon. She might forget her curse just long enough to get careless and let it come true. She might kill everyone she loves.

...they cupped their wings around their happiness and called it a world, though they both knew it was not a world, only a hiding place, which is a very different thing.