Karen Marie Moning: Look

“You can't go forward if you're looking backward. You run into walls that way.”

“Last night you said you wanted to know what to expect so you could better select your attire. I told you we were going to visit a vampire in a Goth-den tonight. Why, then, Ms. Lane, do you look like a perky rainbow?”

“So how did he look at me?"

"Like it was his birthday and you were the cake.”

“See me when you look at me.”

“When he comes, he makes a noise deep in his throat that is so raw and animal and sexual that I think if he merely looked at me and made that noise, I might explode in an orgasm.”

“I lock eyes with my reflection and don’t look away. The day you look away you start to lose yourself. I’m never going to lose myself. You are what you are. Deal with it or change.”

“When Barrons looks at me like that, it rattles me. Lust, in those ancient, obsidian eyes, offers no trace of humanity. Doesn’t even bother trying. Savage Mac wants to invite it to come out and play. I think she’s nuts. Nuts, I tell you.”

“I'd never been turned on by the Ken doll—even before I looked down his pants and saw what was missing.”

“Barrons had just given me the most carnal, sexually charged hungry look I'd ever seen in my life, and I was pretty sure he didn't even know he had done it.”

“Turn it off," Ryodan says without even looking at me. "You're distressing Dani. No one distresses Dani but me.”

“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.”

“Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it's those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trails, or fracture by a permanent, damning fault line.”

“I hammered him with my fists. He just stood and took it. He didn't suffer graciously, he looked pissed off to no end. But he let me hit him. And he didn't hit me back.”

“You can’t look at someone with your eyes and take their measure.
You have to look with the heart.”

“That's weak! You don't know what caring is… Caring is love. And love fights! Love doesn't look for the path of least resistance. Hell's bells, Roderick, if love was that easy everyone would have it. You're a coward!”

“Why did the Lord Master take one look at you and leave? What are you, Barrons?”

“The one who will never let you die, and that’s more, Ms. Lane, than anyone in your life has ever been able to say to you. More than anyone else can do.”

“He just didn't look like the kind of creep that would messily murder a woman in her hotel room; he looked like the kind of creep that could line her up in the sights of an assassins rifle without a shred of emotion.”

“He looked blank. “He’s the one who’s been doing the magic against us?”

“Duh,” I said.

“Doona be ‘duh’ing me, lass,” he growled, his burr thickening.”

“He was still frowning at the cake, looking at it as if he expected it to sprout dozens of legs and begin scuttling toward him, thin-lipped, teeth bared.”