Kerrigan Byrne Famous Quotes
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To no longer be able to abide the comfort of human contact. How did he stand it? No wonder he was so very remote. How could warmth touch your heart when it wasn't even allowed near your skin?
It could have been regret that softened his features, but it was impossible for her to tell. "You're thinking of Mackenzie," he murmured.
Ashamed that she'd been thinking of Blackwell and not her Dougan, Farah nodded, not trusting herself to make a sound.
For the second time since they'd met, he raised his hand to her face, only to pull it back again. "Is there no pity in your heart for me?"
Farah turned from him then, dashing madly at her cheeks. There was, of course, but she didn't dare show it to him. "Do you deserve my pity?" she asked, her voice thick with tears.
"Probably not," he answered honestly. "But the boy I once was might have.
There was something more than a little satisfying about ripping the heart out of someone the moment before they expected to do the same to you.
Experience should have taught ye by now that denying me what I want only makes me more relentless.
He was The Demon Highlander, elder brother to the Blackheart of Ben More. These monikers, they were not granted by the happenstance of birth or marriage, like a Marquess or an Earl, they were earned by means of ruthless violence and bloodshed. It was easy to forget that fact beneath the grand chandelier of this lofty keep. That was, until the fire in the hearth ignited the amber in his eyes, lending him a ferocity that even his expensive attire couldn't tame.
Dougan had almost completely forgotten about the food, for his entire body was suffused with the most intense and exquisite sensation he'd ever known. It was something like hunger, and something like fulfillment. It was wonder and awe and yearning and fear encapsulated in a tender bliss.
The Indian lamb curry centered the meal as the main entree, surrounded with fragrant flat breads. Partridge compote steamed next to a fried savory forcemeat pastry made of garlic, parsley, tarragon, chives and beef suet enclosed in a buttery crust. The appetizer included oysters cut from their shell, sautéed, and then returned to be arranged in a bath of butter and dill.
The footman reappeared, and while he set a second place, Farah counted the admittedly obscene amount of desserts. Perhaps they should have left out the cocoa sponge cake, or the little cream-and-fruit stuffed cornucopias with chocolate sauce. She absolutely couldn't have chosen between the almond cakes with the sherry reduction or the coriander Shrewsbury puffs or... the treacle and the vanilla creme brûlée.
You understand, don't you, Mrs. Mackenzie?" Blackwell murmured, his hard mouth barely moving as the intensity of his regard pinned her to her seat. "The deeds of a willful youth."
A thrill of danger kissed her spine.
"Horseshit!" Morley roared.
Dorian turned back to face him, and Farah was able to let out a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding as the black spell he'd woven over her suddenly dissipated.
"For shame, Morley," he mockingly chided. "Such language in front of a lady."
"She is my employee," Sir Morley gritted through clenched teeth. "And I'll thank you not to bother about her if you want to keep the vision in the eye you have left."
"I can hardly help myself. She's such a ripe piece of skirt.
Hers was a face for the sun. She was a spoiled woman experiencing her first heartbreak.
Learning her first terrible truth about the world of men in which she lived.
She didn't know the first thing about pain.
And yet...the courageous way she fought her threatening emotion, tied him up in knots.
As the soap slid through sparse curls and into the cleft between her thighs, ribbons of unexpected sensation stirred from her most intimate flesh and unfurled across the expanse of her skin. Her mouth dropped open, but she caught the moan before it escaped.
Their gazes collided, the flames in his eyes darkened as his pupils dilated.
He knew. Though he could see nothing, he knew exactly where her fingers drifted, and precisely where the soap slicked over already moistened skin.
Despite her mortification, Farah also marveled. She'd been bathing for almost three decades and, while she'd found a tremor of pleasure whilst lingering here, it had never been so achingly insistent, so full of demand and promise.
That demand, those promises, were mirrored in the stare of Dorian Blackwell.
Her curious fingers paused before dipping below the soft hair. When she encountered the feminine folds, she gasped.
Dorian stopped breathing.
She tested that place lightly, finding a place that quivered and pulsed at the apex of that pliable skin. Awe speared Dorian as her feminine muscles clenched in the exact rhythm his own loins did. He could see them working through the skin unique to her sex. Her hips rolled with instinct little movements, her breaths catching on sighs of appreciation.
If Dorian was a lesser man, unused to patience, torment, and agony, he would have released his seed then and there. But he grappled his orgasm back down, thinking of her hands on his repulsive flesh, letting the fear throw ice into the flames.
Then she parted the inner cleft, dipped inside, and let out a moan that could have aroused Eros, himself. Her finger came away glistening as she pulled it back toward the nub that seemed to demand more attention than anywhere else. Where she swiped the moisture across it, her muscles all tensed, and she threw her head back onto the counterpane, letting loose a sound so visceral Dorian's will snapped.
Dougan would rather have submitted to his thousand tortures than to have you submit to one. He wouldn't have survived your suffering. He loves you that much.
This blood feud is a bit too Shakespearean, if ye want the truth. I'm no Montague, and ye're no Capulet.
Secrets were always covered up and, once revealed, could never again find the darkness.
He clutched her to him with a desperate strength that almost hurt. "I will love you for your light, if you can love me through the dark times. And that love will be like the clear night sky when the moon is full. Not like the sun....but beautiful and bright enough to find our way.
There are only two indisputable facts in this world: One, that the sun will set in the west. And two, that I'll come for you. Always.
Oh, Dougan, why send me this dark horse?' Farah inwardly railed. 'Why ask the devil in the flesh to find and protect me?'
Young Dougan couldn't have known how the man in front of her would affect her. How dangerous he truly was, because of the reckless impulses pouring through her veins and settling in the most secret of places.
He couldn't have known how much Dorian Blackwell secretly thrilled her. How his eyes on her made her feel helpless and powerful at the same time.
She's efficient and well liked, but keeps to herself. Quiet. Which is a rare and commendable female trait, in my experience. She works harder than the other two clerks, but gets paid less.
An eye patch covered his damaged eye, only allowing glimpses of the edge of his scar, but the message illuminated by the fire didn't need both eyes to be conveyed.
'I have you now.'
How true that was. Her life depended on the mercy of this man who was infamous for his lack of mercy.
Nothing else need be said between them. No words or platitudes uttered. No fears or sins confessed. He saw absolution in her eyes. Understanding. Acceptance.
And still he gave her a moment. A warning. A chance to escape.
Because once he got his hands on her, there would be no stopping him.
It surprised him how badly he didn't want anyone else in Hero's room. Even her family. She'd clung to him so ferociously, and he wasn't ready to give that up. So - this was new and dangerous emotional territory.
Still canna resist the draw of the devil."
A tremor sliced through Farah at the old woman's words. Dougan had called himself a demon the first time they'd met. If that sweet boy had been a demon, then Dorian Blackwell certainly was the devil.
And Farah was, indeed, helpless to resist his dark allure.
Tell me you doona want this. Tell me that ye didna feel this storm brewing between us since the very first day we met. That a part of ye didna know that this was an inevitability. I knew from the first time I saw ye that it was my destiny to claim ye here in the mists. And ye must take me, Mena ... all of me. Make demands of yer own. Lay claim to the pleasure I'm willing to offer ye.
Tis best to weight the enemy more mighty than he seems."
Or she, as was this particular case.
Farah gaped, unable to fathom his brutality. She shouldn't be shocked, she'd been around the worst sort of criminals for more years than she'd care to admit. But, somehow, it astounded her that one so cultured, so relaxed and wealthy and tailored, could issue such a threat with a civil tongue. The criminals of her acquaintance were dirty and foul with explosive tempers and crude language. Blackwell threatened violence as though discussing the price of Irish potatoes.
Of course it's all-consuming, but love- real love- doesn't destroy or smother. It's the very opposite of a weakness. Love strengthens. It liberates. It molds itself to every fiber of your being and fortifies you where where you may be broken.
Did you love me?" It was a pathetic question asked in a pathetic whisper.
"Oh, Fiona," The lips he pressed against my temple were anything but ecumenical. His hand on my back drifted to my waist. "My feelings for you cannot be reduced to a single word. You are my only temptation.
Though her muscles went rigid, her tongue sparred with his, as he might have guessed it would. Each lick and swirl, each plunge and retreat became a point counted for or against.
Gavin had never enjoyed a woman's mouth so much in his entire life.
If you love no one, no one can hurt you," she whispered.
A dark shadow leaped from the stairs, his long coat flowing behind him like demon wings, landing in between her and Warrington.
Dorian.
He looked like the devil, come to take his minion. His hair black as obsidian. His scarred eye glittering with so many dark things, Farah couldn't identify a single one through her shock.
Doona fash, Sam." Calybrid, spying her scowl, hurried to balm the wound. "Ye're plenty fair."
"Aye," Locryn agreed.
"With eyes the color of the Alt Dubh Gorm."
"Sure, that too."
"Just… no one will write odes to yer breasts is all."
"On account of ye not having any," Locryn supplied, rather unnecessarily, in Samantha's opinion.
His eyes touched every part of her. Even parts that may never have been touched before. They flashed with lightning, singing along her nerves with electric currents of heat. A sultry, answering thunder whipped through her, calling forth a storm so unexpected, she almost felt betrayed by her own body.
Samantha imagined that in another life, she and Alison could have, indeed, been friends.
Had she not been about to rob the train.
She merely pushed at his chest in utter frustration. He took a step back, just so she'd feel like she'd gained some ground. Now if that wasn't love, he'd cut out his own tongue.
A jewelry box? Ballerinas? She'd been such an active girl that any jewelry she'd been given would have been lost or broken right away. It was Faye Marie who'd loved-
"My sister," she gasped, then louder. "My sister!" She clasped her hands together in a pleading gesture. "My lord, I beg pardon of you, but you're mistaken. I believe you gifted that treasure box to my older sister, Faye Marie. She's the one who loved ballerinas. I was obsessed with-"
"Pegasus." The old justice's eyes melted from cold to kindness. "It was a trick question. I'd forgotten your birthday was so close to mine, and shared my spice cake out of pure guilt." His lined face wrinkled as he smiled with a fond memory. "You were a kind little soul, unspoiled for a girl raised in such wealth. You forgave me instantly and informed me that spice cake was, indeed, your favorite present ever received.
All that is or ever was good in me begins and ends with you" he breathed. "Every time I said you were mine, I meant that I was yours. Always. Always, Lorelai, I've been yours. I'd go through everything I've suffered in my nearly forty years on this earth if it brought me to this moment.
It was written in those stars that we meet." His voice gathered a tender fervency that unstitched something from inside Mena's soul. "We are bound in some inescapable way, thee and me. I've known it since I first laid eyes on ye in that dress.
Cole stilled when his feral eyes found her, roaming every inch as though searching for a wound. The doorway framed him like a portal to purgatory, and he stood like an avenging archangel come to wreak a wrath no less than biblical. The swells of his powerful chest heaved against the white of his shirtsleeves now blotched and stained with blood. The blade on his prosthesis was extended past the motionless metal fingers, and blood dripped from it into a thick crimson puddle on the marble floor.
I recall being quite captivated when we first met," he said lightly. "Helpless, I daresay."
Farah's snort turned into a reluctant laugh. "Don't be charming. It doesn't suit you."
The glimmer in his blue eye became a twinkle, the curve of his mouth lifted a little too far to be called a smirk anymore. But a smile? Almost... "No one's ever accused me of being charming before."
"You don't say." Lord, were they- flirting?
Rich as Midas, they said, powerful as a Caesar, and ruthless as the devil. So he didn't have a pretty face for the ladies to coo over, but a man such as Dorian Blackwell drew feminine notice wherever he prowled. Fear and fascination proved to be powerful tools of seduction, and women reacted one way or the other toward the dark giant.
Ye might no know this about me…"
"But I prefer my women… a wee bit dirty. I've imagined more than once what yer foul mouth could do to me.
The man quoted Confucius? How unfair that a man such as he could be so clever, dangerous, rich, powerful, and well read. Farah stifled a sigh, then, alarmed by her reaction to him, straightened her spine and took up her quill, ready to swipe the efficient shorthand across her paper.
I vow on this holy ground that when this is all over, I'm going to bend you over the first available surface and fuck you sideways. Got it?
The rest of us, we'd lay down our lives for years, but Blackwell... he'd do that and more. He'd rip the beating heart from his chest. He'd give up his soul if ye'd only-"
"It is making a rather large and fallacious assumption that I have a heart to give... or a soul." Dorian Blackwell's smooth voice didn't echo through the washroom as theirs did. He slithered into their midst with a serpentine stealth, striking before Murdoch's words uncovered any of his secrets.
Gasping, Farah sank deep into the bath, thankful the water was now cloudy with soap, though she did draw her knees under her chin and anchor them with her arms, just in case. "Get out!" she insisted in an unsteady voice. "I'm indecent."
"That makes two of us."
He'd moved closer. So close, in fact, that Farah knew if she looked behind her, she'd find his mismatched eyes staring down at her from her towering height. Perhaps, despite the opaque water, he could see the flesh that quivered just below the surface. The thought sent bolts of heat and mortification through her.
"Leave," Farah ordered, unable to face him for fear she'd lost her nerve.
"Stand up and make me.
Christopher Argent kept stealing disbelieving looks at Farah, his blue eyes reflecting the ambient glow like an alley cat's. Dorian understood why the man would dare in his presence.
First, because Christopher Argent was an unfeeling, fearless killer-for-hire.
And second, because most of the incarcerated men at Newgate had considered Dougan's Fairy some mythical creature, a sight too rare and beautiful to be beheld by a common man. Maybe even a fancy born of an imagination keen enough to take possession of the prison. To meet her was to gaze upon a fantasy realized, to remember the desperate yearnings of a lonely prisoner bereft of kindness, mercy, or beauty. To be blinded by the embodiment of all three of those things. For a man like Argent, one born to incarceration, the sight might have him reassessing some long-held cynical philosophies.
Blackwell had become that jaguar she'd evoked the first time she'd laid eyes on him. His shoulders rolled and bunched just so he settled in for a feast.
There was nothing her Ash could not overcome. Nothing he'd not endured. He had a resilience and strength only belonging to men of myth and ancient Gods. He was her own, personal legend." Chapter 22, page 243
Still pleasant as a cornered hedgehog, and as well mannered as a badger, I see.
To distract himself from the pain, he focused his blurring vision on the droplets of moisture collecting like diamonds in her abundant curls. Instead of making her hair heavy and straight, the rain seemed to coil the ringlets tighter and anoint the silvery strands with a darker gloss of spun gold.
I don't think I believe in villains. Heroes either. Just people. People with agendas and the things they're willing to do to get what they want.
I'd never leave you, Fairy."
"Truly? Not even to be a pirate?"
"I promise. I might be a highwayman, though.
Mena knew men like the Laird of Ravencroft Keep rarely existed, and when they did, history made gods of them.
Or demons.
Of all the evil Farah had had a chance to glimpse in this room, Dorian Blackwell's smile, full of his own blood and teeth and challenge, had to be the most frightening Farah had witnessed in her entire life. His eyes were dead, devoid of any hope or humanity, the milky blue one utterly motionless but for the reflection of the torchlight lending it an unnatural pagan gleam.
How fortunate for you that the water obscures so much." Blackwell shifted in his chair, his knees falling wider and his nostrils flaring.
"Would Dougan Mackenzie forgive this coercion?" she challenged, doing her best to ignore the stirrings of her own body. "If you owe him as much as you claim, would he not wish you to spare my modesty?"
The spark of heat in his eyes died for a moment, before flaring brighter than ever. "When we meet in hell, I'll ask his forgiveness.
As much as I approve of your change in tactics, Morley, dangling this tasty piece in front of me still won't have the desired effect." Blackwell's voice reached out to her like the first unwelcome tendrils of frost in winter. Deep, smooth, caustic, and bitter cold.
He was a living, breathing sin.
In her bedroom.
And you consider yourself as what, some sort of Count of Monte Cristo?"
He gave a nonchalant shrug. "Not particularly, though the book is a favorite of mine."
Farah frowned. "I thought you said you couldn't read."
That Dorian Blackwell could laugh at a time like this astounded her. But he did. The sound so devoid of true mirth, it caused goose pimples to rise on her skin and her nipples to tighten painfully. It was a dark sound, like the rest of him, and it washed over her with chilling totality.
She'd taken a life… on the same day she'd created one.
She was little better than a banshee with a sidearm.
It occurred to Gavin that the first thought a groom had upon spying his bride shouldn't be to wonder whether or not she wore knickers.
One kiss. Nothing more?" "One kiss." His head tilted, and the moon shone on his wound. His tongue touched the ridge of the scar, as though he hoped it might have disappeared. "One taste. That's all I ask...
Everyone is a whore, Fiona." I felt rather than heard when he unfolded himself from the settee. He wasn't so much a warmth or an essence behind me. But the absence of either.
"We each merely offer different parts of ourselves for use, do we not? Our sex. Our blades. Our muscles. Our mind. Our time. Our souls.
And if you wake me before nine in the morning again, I'll pate your liver and have it with my breakfast. Now get out. - Millie