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Connor dipped his head and kissed from her neck to her collarbone, and down her arm as he slipped the sark off her shoulder revealing the satiny skin beneath. When he got to her fingers, he nipped her ring finger and Mackenzie gasped as he drew it into his mouth and sucked. He raised his eyes back to hers and trapped her gaze in his own. Connor slid her sark down her body and Mackenzie was helpless to do anything but stare into the dark blue pools of molten desire his eyes had become. It was a heady feeling to know that she was the reason his eyes were so dark; she had never before felt so powerful. He wanted her and this time she knew what to do. Mackenzie unwrapped his plaid from the chieftain brooch and pushed it off his shoulder. Connor held perfectly still and let it fall to the floor with Mackenzie’s pile of clothes. Next Mackenzie dragged his shirt over his head; it too joined the growing pile of clothing. Mackenzie couldn’t help but marvel at his hard body with all its scars hinting at the power and danger this man carried. She let her fingers trail down from his chest to the patch of hair on his stomach, and lower still. She could feel his muscles clench and his breath stop as she wrapped her fingers around his erection. She quickly found his rhythm and knelt down to press her lips to his lower abs. Trailing her mouth down to where her hand was, she gently licked the tip. She felt a thrill of satisfaction as his hands gripped her shoulders and as her mouth took him in, his fingers tightened. She used both her hand and her mouth to pleasure Connor. He molded a hand to the nape of her neck, holding her in place. She was becoming bolder with her free hand, exploring what made his muscles quiver and his breath hitch, when Connor pulled her roughly up and to him, crushing her lips with his. He pressed her back against the cold wall and lifted one of her long legs, hitching it around his hip. She was tall enough that he didn’t have to lift her. He slipped inside her and Mackenzie reveled in the groan wrenched from him. This was how she liked Connor; out of control. He pushed into her again and again until they were both panting, and Mackenzie was moaning with every breath. She couldn’t wait any longer. “Oh God Connor, I’m so close.” “Just let go, love.” With her back pressed against the cold wall and the heat from Connor’s body warming her, Mackenzie shuddered with the force of her orgasm and she melted into Connor’s arms as he spent himself in her. ↗
I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village. I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print. When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or relate to. The idea of placing it on the border of Elfland came from the fact that I'd just re-read a fantasy classic called The King of Elfland's Daughter by the Irish writer Lord Dunsany. I love stories that take place on the borderlands between two different worlds...and so I borrowed this concept, but adapted it to a modern, punky, urban setting. I drew upon elements of the various cities I knew best -- New York, Boston, London, Dublin, maybe even a little of Mexico City, where I'd been for a little while as a teen -- and scrambled them up and turned them into Bordertown. There actually IS a Mad River in southern Ohio (where I went to college) and I always thought that was a great name, so I imported it to Bordertown. As for the water being red, that came from the river of blood in the Scottish folk ballad "Thomas the Rhymer," which Thomas must cross to get into Elfland. [speaking about the Borderland series she "founded" and how she came up with the setting. Link to source; Q&A with Holly, Ellen & Terri!] ↗
The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away, and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. To put it in a nutshell, leaving the novelist to smooth out the crumpled silk and all its implications, he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature. Many people of his time, still more of his rank, escaped the infection and were thus free to run or ride or make love at their own sweet will. But some were early infected by a germ said to be bred of the pollen of the asphodel and to be blown out of Greece and Italy, which was of so deadly a nature that it would shake the hand as it was raised to strike, and cloud the eye as it sought its prey, and make the tongue stammer as it declared its love. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality, so that Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift--plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion--had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared; his eighty riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count the carpets, sofas, trappings, china, plate, cruets, chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma. So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man. ↗
When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night. ↗
#color #memory #new-england #picture #winter
Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. ↗
It doesn't happen to me anymore, because a fresh generation of Africans and Asians has arisen to take over the business, but in my early years in Washington, D.C., I would often find myself in the back of a big beat-up old cab driven by an African-American veteran. I became used to the formalities of the mise-en-scène: on some hot and drowsy Dixie-like afternoon I would flag down a flaking Chevy. Behind the wheel, leaning wa-aay back and relaxed, often with a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth (and, I am not making this up, but sometimes also with a genuine porkpie hat on the back of his head) would be a grizzled man with the waist of his pants somewhere up around his armpits. I would state my desired destination. In accordance with ancient cabdriver custom, he would say nothing inresponse but simply engage the stickshift on his steering wheel and begin to cruise in a leisurely fashion. There would be a pause. Then: 'You from England?' I would always try to say something along the lines of 'Well, I'm in no position to deny it.' This occasionally got me a grin; in any case, I always knew what was coming next. 'I was there once.' 'Were you in the service?' 'I sure was.' 'Did you get to Normandy?' 'Yes, sir.' But it wasn't Normandy or combat about which they wanted to reminisce. (With real combat veterans, by the way, it almost never is.) It was England itself. 'Man did it know how to rain… and the warm beer. Nice people, though. Real nice.' I would never forget to say, as I got out and deliberately didn't overtip (that seeming a cheap thing to do), how much this effort on their part was remembered and appreciated. ↗
You're not paying attention to me, are you?" "Eh? What's that? Sorry, love, I didn't hear you. Wasn't paying attention. I had my eyes on your perfectly formed arse." Catherine fixed him with a glare worthy of a Scottish schoolmaster. "This is serious business Jamie. If you've to pass for a Highlander, you've got to get the kilt just so," "Bah! You're a hoydenish vixen. You just want to ogle my knees." "Nonsense. I'm sure you'll find the ah... freedom and... utility very appealing once you try it on." "You mean you think I'll like the feel of the family jewels waving free?" Blushing, she spread both great kilts on the ground. "One lays down on it like so. Oh stop grinning, Jamie, and do try." She was so earnest and eager in her lesson that he hadn't the heart to tell her he'd worn a kilt a time or two before. ↗
But it doesn't change what we are to each other. It's like there's always been a piece of my soul missing, and it's inside you, Clary. I know I told you once that wheter God exists or not, we're on our own. But when I'm with you, I'm not. ↗
#city-of-lost-souls #clary-fray #god #jace-lightwood #jace-wayland
But sleep didn't come. She could hear Jace's soft piano playing through the walls, but that wasn't what was keeping her awake. She was thinking of Simon, leaving for a house that no longer felt like home to him, of the despair in Jace's voice as he said 'I want to hate you', and of Magnus, not telling Jace the truth: that Alec did not want Jace to know about his relationship because he was still in love with him. She thought of the satisfaction it would have brought Magnus to say the words out loud, to acknowledge what the truth was, and the fact that he hadn't said them - had let Alec go on lying and pretending - because that was what Alec wanted, and Magnus cared about Alec enough to give him that. Maybe it was true what the Seelie Queen had said, after all: Love made you a liar. ↗
Beware, Underlanders, time hangs by a thread. The hunters are hunted, white water runs red. The Gnawers will strike to extinguish the rest. The hope of the hopeless resides in a quest. An Overland warrior, a son of the sun, May bring us back light, he may bring us back none. But gather your neighbors and follow his call Or rats will most surely devour us all. Two over, two under, of royal descent, Two flyers, two crawlers, two spinners assent. One gnawer beside and one lost up ahead. And eight will be left when we count up the dead. The last who will die must decide where he stands. The fate of the eight is contained in his hands. So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps, As life may be death and death life again reaps. ↗
