Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move.

The city had grown, implacably, spreading its concrete and alloy fingers wider every day over the dark and feral country. Nothing could stop it. Mountains were stamped flat. Rivers were dammed off or drained or put elsewhere. The marshes were filled. The animals shot from the trees and then the trees cut down. And the big gray machines moved forward, gobbling up the jungle with their iron teeth, chewing it clean of its life and all its living things.Until it was no more. Leveled, smoothed as a highway is smoothed, its centuries choked beneath millions and millions of tons of hardened stone. The birth of a city... It had become the death of a world.

He'd never considered sweet and conservative to be so hot, but damn, Emma wore it well.

It's hard to unlock a door with a condom," Emma shot back.His brilliant smile stole her heart. "Honey, you'd be surprised how many doors those babies have unlocked.

I__ going to kiss you.__nother whimper, but she didn__ jerk from his hold. __ know, and that__ an extremely bad idea.

She reeked of respectability and sophistication, and he went hard on a helpless surge of lust.