Brandi

“V shook his head. “Remember what you saw in that clearing, cop? How’d you like that anywhere near a female you loved?”

Butch put down the Bud without drinking from it. His eyes traveled over Rhage’s body.

“We’re going to need a shitload of steel,” the human muttered.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Eternal

“That's you," Wrath said. You shall be called the Black Dagger warrior Dhestroyer, descended of Wrath son of Wrath."

"But you'll always be Butch to us," Rhage cut in. "As well as hard-ass. Smart-ass. Royal pain in the ass. You know, whatever the situation calls for. I think as long as there's an ASS in there, it'll be accurate."

"How about bASStard?" Z suggested.

"Nice. I feel that.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Revealed

“By the way, I haven't heard an 'I'm sorry' from you yet." My sense of grievance had overwhelmed my sense of self-preservation.
I am sorry that the maenad picked on you."
I glared at him. "Not enough," I said. I was trying hard to hang on to this conversation.
Angelic Sookie, vision of love and beauty, I am prostrate that the wicked evil maenad violated your smooth and voluptuous body, in an attempt to deliver a message to me."
That's more like it.”
― Charlaine Harris, Living Dead in Dallas

“Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it’s a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is grasped and held by a book, reading does not feel like an escape from life so much as it feels like an urgent, crucial dimension of life itself.”
― Rebecca Mead, My Life in Middlemarch