Rachel Caine

I can understand the lonely, solitary life better than most.

And how harshly others can judge it.

Sam kisses like someone who means it. He tastes of the rich, dark cherry flavors of the Bordeaux.

Everything he’s done is tainted now to me. Every smile was just mechanics. Every laugh was manufactured. Every public sign of affection was just that: for the public.

And always, always, the monster lay just under the surface of it all.

As I look at her standing there, holding the knife, pale and afraid and yet fearless, I love her with an intensity that hurts me. I also fear what I’ve made her into.

September twenty-third.

A shoulder wound isn’t the clean, simple thing they show in the movies and on television; you don’t walk it off. Done right, a shoulder wound can take away use of that arm forever.