Quotes by V.S. Carnes

The horizon was indistinguishable from the inky black, which fell upon the desert like a sorcerer’s mantle shot through with diamonds. The stars were so tiny, so far away, and yet, at the moment, with her fingers curled around his, he almost felt as though he could reach up and snag one by the tail.

Remind me to thank God I don’t have a sister.”Caine eyed him critically. He was a filthy heap of blood and soot and sand stuck to the gun oil on his face. “Yeah,” without much enthusiasm. “I’ll thank Him for ya.

There will always be another war, Gillia.” He allowed his cynicism to seep through. “Do you know why? Because there will always be bigots and cowards and power-mad devils in positions of omnipotence. Look around you. There has been war here since time began. It’s nature. Animals kill each other for survival, for territory… and for the taste of blood in their mouths. Man is no different.

Fate had a cruel sense of humor. It had been all his fault, anyway, whatever Mick or Gillia told him. Careless preoccupation and utter stupidity. Boyhood ignorance and negligence. He was only getting what he deserved, over and over again, for the rest of his life. If only in his dreams.

Are you in the habit of taking tea with anyone who approaches you in a foreign port?” He went on and snorted carelessly. “No wonder you were abducted so easily.

I will not marry Ashton. However bound by honor to do so, I will not marry Ashton. I will not marry, ever!” “Why not?”“Because I love you, you idiot!

She’d said she loved him. Shed put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he’d thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.

I’ve crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you. I love you. I’ve done nothing in my life worth more than that.

His head snapped sharply aside to collide with his own aching shoulder. The hulking brute he had heard referred to as Abdullah leaned into Caine’s face while his brain was yet reeling, flexing his fingers from the punch just dealt to his jaw, and said in Arabic, “I did not know English women were so strong.

This man was no servant. She looked up at him in acute agitation and knew: this man was now her master.

What she knew was sand and wind and innumerable stars. The rumble in a camel’s throat as it swayed over shifting dunes, its trappings jingling in time with its steps beneath her. She knew the sting of thirst and the taste of dried fruit, the glare of sun and the frigid, bone-numbing cold of the air when the sun gave her throne over to the moon. She knew that, to survive, one must often revise one’s caliber, and one must completely depend upon Jesus Christ.

He squinted at her. He recalled the tears in her eyes that had not fallen into her teacup. No, it wasn’t a revelation. Not even to him. Yet, this was the same woman who had stolen a camel right out from under the Anti-Zionist army’s nose. She’d taken his hand, thrown herself down a sand dune on a dare, and then beaten him back up it. She’d glared at him and refused to part from his side. A coward? “Never,” he said again.

I stole you, among others, from the streets of God’s birthplace. I forced you to work as a slave. Imprisoned, mistreated and starved you and your companion. To top it off, I am in the process of selling your life to the highest bidder. Why would you trust me?

Kent steepled his fingers in consideration. Blood-red rubies flashed in the sunlight, like the eyes of a demon clutched in his hands.

Anger swirled in him, a tempest readying her strike. And like a helpless vessel caught in her fury, he felt himself dashed against the rocks without mercy.

La mu’axsa, but I think I’ll just keep sliding down this greased pole to hell?

When silence greeted her question, she looked at Caine—for that was how he saw himself in that moment and in all the moments after: his brother’s murderer.

Just say, dakhilak.”Without hesitation, “Dakhilak.”He nodded. Her accent was getting no better. “Now, you can never take it back.”“Well, what does it mean? Thank you?”She should have asked sooner. He didn’t turn to meet the gaze he felt on him, his voice full of sand, his stomach sick. “It gives me charge of your life.

And what was to become of what he had taken from her? He had dashed her heart to the ground and danced on it with combat boots. Did he sit in that seditious palace day after day and not even bother to scrape it off of his soles with a passing thought of her?

She thought she loved him. She was crazy.