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.

There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.

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.

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.

It was her. No one had eyes like that. Eyes as pure as the sky on a fresh, wintery morning. Ones that sucked him in and refused to let go. No one had her touch. Feather light and warm. A touch that sizzled his insides and brought him to his knees.And no one had that pure, simple, cherry-vanilla scent. The sweetness that was only her, like she was a dessert made just for him. To lick, nibble, and enjoy.

A smile curled the corner of Xavier__ mouth. __ou didn__ think I would let her walk out of my arms without knowing I would see her again soon, did you?__ryant shrugged. __ell, no. I guess not. What are you going to do now?__he lid of the case slammed shut, and Xavier jerked his vibrating phone back out of his pocket. __ell, as soon as I get these fires extinguished, I__ going to go start one with her.__ryant laughed. __fter this long, that__l be one hell of a raging inferno.___ hope so.