My mother used to say not sleeping was the sign of a guilty mind. It could have been. There was a lot in my mind to feel guilty about. When you__e drunk and trying to sleep, your thoughts are visited by the ghosts of those deeds whose heat still glows hottest in your personal darkness. Our actions burn much longer than the moments in which they occur. And drunks like me, we hide from the glow of the embers by fueling other fires and hiding within the flames.

I tilt my head slightly to one side, taking in her blue sleeveless dress which ends a few inches above her knees. She looks exquisite. Definitely perfect for dessert.__ know what I want to eat and it__ not lemon cake._ I say thickly.Heat flares up in her eyes and I know the cake has been forgotten.She wants to be dessert.

As soon as I saw her, I knew I had to stay far away from her. Being with her makes me feel like I__e been starving for so long. Sofia has given me a taste of something I didn__ know I wanted. Something I am now desperate for. Her.

...this refinement and delicacy were what Cale adored; but Cale had been beaten into shape, hammered in dreadful fires of fear and pain. How could she be with him for long? A secret part of Arbell had been searching for some time for a way to leave her lover__lthough she was unaware of this, it is only fair to record. And so as Cale waited for her to save him while he worked out a way of saving her, she had already chosen the bitter but reasonable path of the good, of the many over the one...

If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also...but of course if you were able to stand soberly after the first slap.

The attraction of reading is that it allows you to live, for a few hours, as someone else__rants you access to their head, their thoughts, their secrets.