Quotes by V.S. Carnes

It came as naturally to him as breathing or lying, or worse. His mama had only taught her son to be cautious at all times. Garnette was more than that. Much, much more than that.

After all, you are a hero and everything.

“Oh, Lord, why was she doomed to adore a man steeped in blindness and utter stupidity?”

“Ive crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you.”

“It was a question of insurmountable proportions. A single word that held every fear he had ever had-and every wish he had ever made on those cursed stars. She neednt say more. In a single syllable, she had said more than he wanted to hear in an entire lifetime.”

“By now, she was far from the scorch of these sands. After the ransom deal, she would be safely married in England. To Ashton. And Caine, who had hurt her far more than anything Abdullah had planned for her with that long, curved dagger, deserved no better than this torment of knowing it.”

“She was a little thing, too, inciting that basic compulsion in him as a man to protect her in so hectic a place as post-war Israel. Even so, his actions were borne out of an entirely different instinct, altogether: to fool her and anyone within a darts range... to protect himself.”

“He wanted to die. He prayed for it. Through the roar in his ears, he begged for it.”

“Care for her. He was unworthy of such a gift. Unworthy of her blind trust and her sparkling, slightly crooked smiles, let alone her heart. But he wanted her, selfish fool he was and had always been. Care for her? Ah, God, she consumed him.”

“Better this way, what remained of his battered sensibilities told him. He was no good for her, anyway. She didn’t understand him. She didn’t understand that he was cursed. And, selfish as he was, he’d rather she hate him than he hate himself any more than he was already going to. Any more than he already did.”

“Caine might have smiled at her, had his heart not been breaking to smithereens inside of him.”

“He heard the voice that had called to him in dreams, had saved him from the sands and from following his brother into the river.”

“Because you have my heart, Virgilia Wessex.” Softly, almost achingly. “Every black ounce of it. Scars and all.”

“Caine was a murderer. A liar. A cad. A skulker in shadows and a heartless wretch. What sort of woman or God would love someone like him?”

“He smelled the salt on his own lips and the orange blossoms in her hair. Real ones, he could see now, tucked into the curls with cheap, native combs. The sight of them gave him hope.”

“Caine usually woke from the recurring dream mid-air, having yet to be dashed upon the rocks, whimpering and panting like a child crying for his mother. Now he lifted his eyes to a dark, empty room in Jizan and the unusual, lingering scent of roses, and wept in his hands for his Father.”

“He didn’t deserve compassion. Sympathy. Not even understanding. He deserved worse, far worse than he had ever been given.”

“In a land that knew only dark beauty, she was something of a hybrid no one dared touch. But the tall Arab did not appear in the least daunted by her abnormality. No, she saw his eyes. He was not daunted in the least.”

“The blood dried on his good hand, he passed his palm over her hair. It curled about his wrist and sprung back into displace as the breeze fluttered by. In the firelight, it was golden like the dandelions of which she’d spoken. The ones that had grown along the Franklin riverbank in late summer. The ones he had lost any faith in since he’d committed his first murder there.”

“He’d thought it would be the right thing to say, but she scoffed a little… and that, more than anything—more than the prospect of having his ribs crushed in or his face pulled off or his neck stretched on a rope—scared him out of his wits.”