laya

“He had all but pleaded for it, the precision and scalpel-sharp intimacy of Julian’s cruelty. He had needed to remember that they were monstrous together, merciless, twins conjoined at the teeth.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“Paul knew all the vulnerable places on Julian's body, and when he'd touched them before, it was with a gentleness born of fear. He could decide to be gentle now. He could bare Julian's throat and kiss the thin skin between his collarbones; he could follow the ragged scar tissue with his lips and pretend as he always did that he felt no desire in his teeth.
Only fear had ever held him back. He wanted to tear through Julian's skin and map the shapes of liver and lungs, to memorize the path of every artery with his fingertips. He wanted to break Julian's body open and move inside it alongside him, rib cages interlaced around a single heart. There was an emptiness inside Paul that would take and never stop taking. He should never have believed that Julian couldn't tell it was there.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clear of him no matter how he tried.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam