V.S. Carnes Quotes

I've crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you.

Kas was right: a woman could destroy a man. This one could do so, simply by knowing his name. She could do so, simply with her eyes.

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 needn't say more. In a single syllable, she had said more than he wanted to hear in an entire lifetime.

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.

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

She wondered how a man could look into a woman’s eyes and lie so completely, so convincingly. She wondered how he could have looked and not seen the love that had glowed there, the blind faith, the unconditional devotion. She wondered how he would sleep at night, knowing he had betrayed her so effortlessly.

No fairy tale, this. This was by no stretch of the imagination a polished fantasy. This was a searing, living force, rough around the edges, unfamiliar and bittersweet.
And precious.

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

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.

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 dart's range... to protect himself.

Looking back at him was a man who was battered and broken.
And alive, for the first time in his life.

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

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.

I remember every good thing about you. Every sweet and perfect thing. And nothing else.” He touched her chin, tipped it up to look into her wet brown eyes. Even smudged, they were gorgeous. The dawning light in them filled his heart, and healed it. “Nothing else.

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

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.

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.

A hand stole around her mouth, silencing her, then his lips parting her tumbled hair: “The walls have ears.”
She blinked, and for the first time, looked around. A thin beam of light beneath what may have been a door. That was all. When he released her, she endeavored to match his own, barely audible tone. “Do the walls understand English?

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.