The war consciousness is purposely cultivated to guide the male away from the natural, healthy balances between masculine and feminine energies, and toward more unbalanced and detached psychologies.

The revolutionary woman knows the world she seeks to overthrow is precisely one in which love between equal human beings is well nigh impossible. We are still part of the ironical working-out of this, our own cruel contradiction. One of the most compelling facts which can unite women and make us act is the overwhelming indignity or bitter hurt of being regarded as simply __he other_, __n object_, __ommodity_, __hing_. We act directly from a consciousness of the impossibility of loving or being loved without distortion. But we must still demand now the preconditions of what is impossible at the moment. It is a most disturbing dialectic, our praxis of pain.

Another flash of recognition sped through her mind. It__ him, her thoughts whispered through the fog of arousal. And she wanted to know who he was. What else he could do for her. What he__ feel like inside her. What he would unleash within her.

Xavier had thought he was in paradise before. He__ been wrong. Sophia was more than paradise. She was the very reason he breathed.

He shivered beneath her touch, and his jaw clenched. It pleased her. Her longing rose to the surface, and an unfamiliar emotion overcame her. It swam beneath her skin, lighting little flickers of recognition. It was the same heat__he same feeling__hat had made her run the night before. Not this time, though. This time she would own it. Embrace it. Ride it. Enjoy it.

You__e my true north. No compass would point me in any other direction but to you.