karent > karent's Quotes

“In bed, I steal moments of tenderness when sex has finally exhausted me to the point where I’m too bone weary to fret anymore about the enormous capacity for evil that’s taken up squatter’s rights inside me. I touch him, put all those things I don’t say into my hands as I trace the red and black tattoos on his skin, the sharp planes and hollows of his face, bury my hands in his dark hair. He watches me in silence when I do, eyes dark, unfathomable.

I sometimes wake up to find he’s pulled me close to him and is holding me, spooned into my back with his face in my hair, and those hands that don’t speak like mine don’t speak move over my skin and tell me I’m cherished, honored, seen.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Burned

“I didn’t want to hide the memory from you. I wanted to cram it down your goddamn throat. I wanted to force you to face it, to want it, to want me, to be willing to fight for what was possible between us with the same single-minded devotion as you fucked. Well, Ms. Lane, you’ve got your precious memory back. Will you throw me away now?”
― Karen Marie Moning, Burned

“Ms. Lane.”Barrons’ voice is deep, touched with that strange Old World accent and mildly pissed off. Jericho Barrons is often mildly pissed off. I think he crawled from the swamp that way, chafed either by some condition in it, out of it, or maybe just the general mass incompetence he encountered in both places. He’s the most controlled, capable man I’ve ever known.
After all we’ve been through together, he still calls me Ms. Lane, with one exception: When I’m in his bed. Or on the floor, or some other place where I’ve temporarily lost my mind and become convinced I can’t breathe without him inside me this very instant. Then the things he calls me are varied and nobody’s business but mine.

I reply: “Barrons,” without inflection. I’ve learned a few things in our time together. Distance is frequently the only intimacy he’ll tolerate. Suits me. I’ve got my own demons. Besides I don’t believe good relationships come from living inside each other’s pockets. I believe divorce comes from that.

I admire the animal grace with which he enters the room and moves toward me. He prefers dark colors, the better to slide in and out of the night, or a room, unnoticed except for whatever he’s left behind that you may or may not discover for some time, like, say a tattoo on the back of one’s skull.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading,” I say nonchalantly, rubbing the tattoo on the back of my skull. I angle the volume so he can’t see the cover. If he sees what I’m reading, he’ll know I’m looking for something. If he realizes how bad it’s gotten, and what I’m thinking about doing, he’ll try to stop me.

He circles behind me, looks over my shoulder at the thick vellum of the ancient manuscript. “In the first tongue?”

“Is that what it is?” I feign innocence.

He knows precisely which cells in my body are innocent and which are thoroughly corrupted. He’s responsible for most of the corrupted ones. One corner of his mouth ticks up and I see the glint of beast behind his eyes, a feral crimson backlight, bloodstaining the whites.

It turns me on. Barrons makes me feel violently, electrically sexual and alive. I’d march into hell beside him.

But I will not let him march into hell beside me. And there’s no doubt that’s where I’m going.

I thought I was strong, a heroine. I thought I was the victor. The enemy got inside my head and tried to seduce me with lies.

It’s easy to walk away from lies.

Power is another thing.

Temptation isn’t a sin that you triumph over once, completely and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say your prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows exactly how you take it.

He skirts the Chesterfield sofa and stands over me. “Looking for something, Ms. Lane?”

I’m eye level with his belt but that’s not where my gaze gets stuck and suddenly my mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow and I know I’m going to want to. I’m Pri-ya for this man. I hate it. I love it. I can’t escape it.

I reach for his belt buckle. The manuscript slides from my lap, forgotten. Along with everything else but this moment, this man. “I just found it,” I tell him.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Burned

“Where are you? Touch me.”
I slip my hand into his, and for a moment he just stands there, looking down at where I am, then he closes his eyes and laces strong fingers with mine. I hear exactly what he’s not saying in them: You better bring your ass back to me, woman.
I reply with mine, Always.
He laughs softly then somehow finds my face and kisses me, light and fast, and I taste him on my lips, need him again, hard and fast and soon.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Burned

“Mac draws up short to keep from slamming into Barrons and her blonde hair swings back over her shoulder, brushing his face as it goes and my hearing is so good I catch the rasp of it chafing the shadow stubble on his jaw, then one of his hands grazes her breast and his eyes narrow when he looks at what he touched in a hungry way I want a man to look at me like one day and, as they continue to recover from the near-collision, their bodies move in a graceful dance of impeccable awareness of precisely where the other is at all times that is unity, symbiosis, partnership I only dream of, wolves that chose to pack up and hunt together, soldiers who will always have each other’s back no matter what, no sin, no transgression too great, ‘cause don’t we all transgress sometimes and it fecking slays me, because once I got a little taste of what that was like and it was heaven and they’re so beautiful standing there, the best of the best, the strongest of the strong that they practically glow to me, on fire with all I ever wanted in my life—a place to belong and someone to belong there with.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Burned

“A woman who’s lived in a cage all her life. And hates it. Bored in there, aren’t you. Waiting for life to happen. And when it finally does, it steals from you what you loved most. So take back. Explode. Lash out. Blow up”
― Karen Marie Moning, Burned

“He pulls me around and kisses me. "You're Mac," he says. "And I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?"
I do.
Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain...Try living for someone. Through it all-good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That's the hard thing.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“Sometimes, Ms. Lane," he said, "one must break with one's past to embrace one's future. It is never an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims. Letting go of what was, to survive what is.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever

“Four: If you try to force yourself into my head, I will force myself into your pants.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Dreamfever

“Stop staring at my dick," he growled.

Oh, yes it was definitely an illusion. "Barrons loved me staring at his dick,"I informed it. "he would have been happy if I'd stared at his dick all day long, composing odes to its perfection.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“Punch me."
"Don't be absurd."
"Come on, punch me, Barrons."
"I'm not punching you."
"I said, punch--OW!"
He decked me.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever

“I'm sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody's does, and you go on. It's how you go on that defines you.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever

“And here we go. She's bristling and my hackles go up. Bloody hell, I feel fangs coming on. Tell you what, Ms. Lane," Barrons said softly, "Anytime you want to have a conversation with me, leave the myriad issues you have with wanting to fuck me every time you look at me outside my cave, come on in, and see what you find. You might like it.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“Even I don't know what you're doing, and I know everything.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever

“Try a rocket launcher. Think maybe you could manage to hit me with that?”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“We're translating the Kama Sutra," Barrons said, with interactive aids.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“If he’d been any other man and i'd been any other girl, I’d have called the narrowing of his heavy-lidded dark eyes lust. But he was Barrons and I was Mac, and a blossoming of lust was about as likely as orchids blooming in Antarctica”
― Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever

“For what other reason would you have me save you? Because I like you? Better to be useful than liked.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever

“The four Keltar Druids brought their wives and children. They breed like it's their personal mission to populate their country in case somebody attacks again, as if anybody wants the bloody place.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“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.”
― Karen Marie Moning

“I’m obsessed and addicted and ripped-down-raw in love with Jericho Barrons.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Burned

“Leave it alone, I'm handling this," Barrons told Ryodan.
"I suggest you do a better job."
"And I suggest you go fuck yourself.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“I whirled and locked gazes with him, shucked my pride, doffed my prickly alpha stubbornness and said, You are my world, Jericho Barrons. Not him. Never him.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Feversong

“Barrons’s hold tightened further. “Give me one good reason not to kill him. Ms. Lane,” he growled roughly around thick, long black fangs. “Because I asked you not to, Barrons. That’s good enough. You killed the other princes, and I was grateful. I wasn’t ready then. I was still afraid of what I’d become. But this last prince is mine to kill or not to kill. And I say no. At the moment. And although Cruce is incapable of understanding that word, I know you know that a no from me means no. And you will honor it,” I said in a voice that brooked no resistance. It was one of the defining differences between the two proud, dark, violent males. And if he didn’t honor it, he wasn’t the man I believed he was.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Feversong

“The corners of his mouth twitched then he gave up the ghost and just flashed me one of those rare, full-on smiles that always made me catch my breath and stare. He's so damn beautiful and his smiles are sunshine in a black velvet sky, improbable and stunning.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Feversong

“I have to talk to him,” I said flatly. “I forbid it.” Every cell in my being bristled. I practically shouted, “You what?” “For. Bid. It.” “You did not just say that to me.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Feversong

“This lion that I'd sauntered up to wearing my flashy peacock feathers hadn't snapped the head off my skinny, brilliantly colored neck, he'd only licked me and waited for me to grow claws. I had neither flashy feathers nor claws now. I'd become yet another thing.
A steel fist inside a velvet glove.
Strong enough that I was no longer afraid to be gentle. Powerful enough that I could be vulnerable. Scarred enough that I could understand and thread lightly around the deepest scars of others.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Feversong

“I couldn't imagine Jericho Barrons as a child, going to school, face freshly scrubbed, hair neatly combed, lunch box in hand.
He'd surely been spawned by some cataclysmic event of nature, to born.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Dreamfever

“He was standing right behind us, the epitome of stillness, one hand on the back of the sofa, dark hair slicked back from his face, his expression arrogant and cold. No surprise there. Barrons is arrogant and cold. He’s also wealthy, strong, brilliant, and a walking enigma. Most women seem to find him drop-dead sexy, too. Thankfully I’m not most women. I don’t get off on danger. I get off on a man with strong moral fiber. The closest Barrons ever gets to fiber is walking down the cereal aisle at the grocery store.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever