I was on a bit of a Thea Harrison glom, rereading her novellas and my very favorite novel, Oracles' Moon. So many well written passages, both emotional and humorous, jumped out at me with this read that I decided to share them here.
Oracle's Moon has THE very best love scene I've ever read. Khalil is a Djinn and he can take an almost human form or his natural Power form. He knows very little about humans and even less about human children. But he's a fast learner. ;-)
"She was suspended a few inches off the floor, completely supported in midair. Her feet didn't dangle. He knee wasn't strained in the slightest. Khalil watched her expression with a heavy-lidded gaze, his lips curved in that sinful, sensual smile.
As his hands - both his hands - slid under the hem of her top and spread around the sides of her cage, resting against her skin.
And long, hot fingers slid through her short hair, cupping and massaging the back of her head.
And two hands slid down her thighs, to the sensitive skin at the back of her knees, cupping them firmly.
She stared at him, blank with shock. "Khalil."
His smile widened, a tender, mischievous look. "Relax, I've got you," he murmured. Then his smile was burned to vapor by the incandescence inside of him, and all that was left on his elegant face was savage hunger.
Oh God, I want to reread it again, because that's not the end of their lovemaking by any means. I want me a Djinn of my own.
As for the children - Chloe is four years old; Khalil is thousands of years old. And ...
Chloe and Kalil assessed each other like two gunfighters in a Western movie. Grace could almost see the dirt street they stood on, with the white steeple of a church in the background. The classic theme music from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly whistled in her head. She could have sworn a tumbleweed blew by. There was going to be a shootout at the O.K. Corral, and it wasn't going to be pretty.
LOL! Way to write a metaphor!
Another amusing passage, right on the first page of chapter one:
The babysitter Janice's pointed words kept bouncing around in Grace's head like a loose football on a field. That football was ten yards away from the end zone, and it had two teams of two-hundred-pound-plus NFL football players scrambling after it with the intensity of their multimillion-dollar careers being on the line, and if that football could, you know it would be whining, "Oh geez this is gonna hurt."
That caught my attention because I'm a football fan. (ROLL TIDE!!)
*****
Another metaphor, this one in Hunter's Season, a novella.
He said nothing as he stood and watched. The moment spun on an enchanted spindle until it drew out, long and golden like a thread of dyed flax pulling taut between them. She would not look up. She could not. She did not feel in control of herself, and she was terrified at what might show in her eyes.
And Natural Evil:
She was not afraid of death. Death was a thief that always wore a mask. Accident, disease, stillbirths, old age, natural causes, war, murder. It existed in the shivering silence between tolls of a bell. It stole everything away while it left its mark, a dark knowledge that lingered at the back of smiling eyes, a hesitation between thought and action in times of danger, a heaviness that tunneled wormholes into happy memories.
She and death had danced together for a long time. Sometimes the were partners. Sometimes they were opponents. Sometimes she might cheat him, but hell, that old thief was still bound to win some day.
She pulled the trigger.
True Colors:
He put bullets in clips to load his guns, and read files on unsolved crimes and treatises on war. aHe taught recruits how to wait, how to obey orders, and how to kill, and he played chess because it was a battle wits that kept his mind sharp.
He put his forehead to her breast. His hands fisted in her nightgown.
He needed to come home but he didn't know how. He hadn't even known where home was until he looked in her face for the first time. He needed to be welcomed, but he wasn't sure he deserved it.
~
~
"He whispered, "I want to be a good man."
Devil's Gate:
And now all she could do was wonder, what else could he say in that silent, sensual language of his?
What poems could his fingers whisper as they danced across her skin?
What eloquent prose could he share with his body?
I wish I'd written any and all of these passages. They all touched me, each in its own way; made me sit up and take notice. Some brought tears to my eyes. All of them enhanced the storylines, which I see I neglected to include, but that's why they made Amazon, right?
Try Thea Harrison's Elder Races. It really is worth it.
That's some beautiful writing.
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