What makes a good book great? Words…and how the writer chooses to put those words together. Elena and I will tell anybody, anywhere how much we love Gabriel’s Inferno by Sylvain Reynard …O…wait we have, and we’ll continue to do so whenever we’re given the opportunity. SR is a brilliant writer who puts words together in exactly the right way…the kind of way that makes you want to read his words over and over. We’ll always be grateful that SR decided to share his beautiful gift with the world, and we can’t wait til he shares it again…we’ll be right there waiting…to read his words again.
Now we’d like to share some of our favorite words from Gabriel’s Inferno with you…
Tamie:
Julia had been evicted from the realm of the surprised and relocated right into the land of the astonished.
He noticed the water that was continuing to stream off her, then he began to notice the clothes that were under the water, and then he began to notice what was under the clothes, because it was cold…and he hastily and somewhat huskily suggested that she forego making tea in order to dry herself.
He blinked at her like a Christmas tree, somehow having a difficult time registering the fact that she had clearly been crying in between his departure and his return.
If it had been Miss Peterson who he’d picked up, she probably would have leaned over and undone his zipper with her teeth while he was driving.
Meanwhile, Mr. Emerson had been adjusting himself under the table because the sight of Miss Mitchell tasting wine was the most erotic thing he’d ever witnessed.
“You blossom under kindness, don’t you? Like a rose.”
To kiss her senseless, move his lips to her neck, and claim her.
He needed to go home, lie down, and breathe until he calmed the fuck down.
His kiss was passionate and full of emotion, as if every fiber of his being had melted and spread itself on his lips only to be given to her.
He pulled her closer, snaking his arm beneath her neck and down to her waist where he splayed his hand, fingers wide,at the small of her back.
He gently rolled her onto her back and placed his hands on either side of her hips, hovering over her-eyes wide-staring longingly and intensely down into her very soul.
Angelfucker, thought Gabriel.
Not merely cool, like a breeze, or water from a stream in the autumn, but cold.
“I want her petals to open,” Gabriel breathed softly.
Usually a woman wearing four-inch heels and long blond hair, who would scratch long fingernails down his back while screaming his name, over and over again…
He was paving hell with energy-buying an indulgence, forgiveness for a sin.
For baiser in French could mean either the innocence of a kiss or the animalistic quality of a fuck.
“Gabriel, that woman is totally eye-fucking you! What the hell?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, hoping the movement would successfully dislodge his advancing arousal from its current trap.
He sounded like sex.
He smelled of Laphroaig and something distinctively Gabrielian and potentially dangerous.
His eyes hardened into two icy blue jewels, and his voice cooled to the temperature of water gliding over a glacier.
They both inhaled deeply, drinking in one another’s scent.
I am a selfish and self-absorbed bastard who rarely notices the concerns of other human beings.
Gabriel stood up very straight, released her chin, and strode to the taxi, slamming the car door behind him.
(One can only imagine Gabriel’s reaction to that suggestion, but it ran along the lines of no fucking way.)
“He can take his messenger bag and shove it up his I’m-too-good-for-domestic-items ass”
Oh gods of all pretentious pole-in-keister Dante specialists, send him a rash on il pene.
There was no rush of blood, no humming, no explosion of fire across her skin.
In almost half a heartbeat, a great wave of sadness washed over her as she cursed herself for having tasted of something long ago that she could never have after or again.
Gabriel was halfway through a very elaborate imagining of what an Easter fetish might include before he came to his senses.
The sight of his name written lovingly, albeit randomly, several times in her notebook beckoned to him like a soft Siren call and sent a thrill coursing up and down his back.
Lifting her onto the desk and pressing himself between her knees, her hands tugging at his hair, his sweater, his shirt, undoing his bow tie and flinging it to the floor.
He would wonder if they were close enough, would their heartbeats synchronously…or was that simply a poet’s fancy?
Their tongues would tangle and tango together desperately, as if they had never kissed before.
Soon she would be naked and open before him, thinking only of him and his rapt admiration, and not the feel of the carrel air against pale, pink flesh.
His other hand would flex across her lower back, the sweet expanse of arched skin, and he’d gaze into her large and liquid eyes as she gasped and moaned.
Tasting. Taking. Sucking. Sinning. Draining. Abandoning.
All thoughts of mad, passionate fucking on desks and chairs, against walls and bookshelves and windows, immediately gave way.
And perhaps out of love for the memory of his former self, before all the sin and vice took root and grew, like a patch of thorns turning and twisting and choking out his virtues.
The Angelfucker strikes again, Gabriel growled to himself.
He despised sneakers on women, for they were a waste of a perfectly good podiatric opportunity.
“And wouldn’t you rather drink one of this rather than two bottles of Budweiser, which really is like drinking apalling bath water?”
“You must accept it, or this injustice will remain unresolved between us, and I won’t believe you’ve forgiven me for my verbal indiscretion in front of one of your peers.”
Gabriel’s blue eyes burned into hers with something akin to passion and admiration.
She was undoing him slowly, bit by bit, and he did not understand how.
Did he just use the word shenanigans in a sentence?
The thought of Gabriel taking another girl, any girl, to his bed, perchance to his soul, wounded her deeply.
O gods of all graduate-students-trying-really-hard-to-do-a-good-thing-for-an-old-friend, help me pry that Emerson whore off his dick. Please.
“You tell him that-tell him he fucks with the angel at his peril.”
He feathered his fingers across her skin until his hand finally stilled against her lower back.
He was clad only in his underwear, which made him look slightly sexy and slightly ridiculous.
For despite all her defiance, there was a flame in her that recognized its twin in Gabriel.
She was silent as she felt the energy between them shift, like a serpent circling back on itself, swallowing itself whole, anger and passion feeding off one another.
Passion remained, but anger gave way to a bracing electricity that burned and crackled around them, as Julia answered his invitation and opened to him.
One more kiss under the ear, with a flick of his tongue, more of a promise than a farewell, and Gabriel stopped.
Julia opened her eyes to find Gabriel smiling down on her, looking very much like a troubled angel- an angel with dark hair, a mouth made for sin, and piercing blue eyes.
If I hadn’t said no, he’d have flashed his signature smile and had me naked and spread-eagled before my panties even hit the floor.
He grinned wickedly at her silent acquiescence before drawing her fingers into his mouth, one by one, sucking them slowly and swirling his tongue unhurriedly around the tips.
The Professor certainly had a way with words…and flowers and music and chocolate cake…
“I never know whether you’re going to be sweet and whisper something that takes my breath away or say something so fucking mean it breaks my…”
“I am a good lover, Julianne, in all senses of the word.”
“As soon as I touched you I knew…and when I touched you again…I remembered you.”
She just gave in, licking, and sucking and moving…
“I’m not going to allow another man to put his hands on you, and that includes Paul and any other Angelfucker out there.”
But snuggled in his arms the night before, a wave of emotion had crashed over her, and all her little defences were carried out to sea like a toppled sandcastle.
She was barely covered and damp from the shower, and the sight of the two together…he twitched.
He fluttered his mouth with soft kisses down to the hollow at the center of her throat and pressed his lips there firmly, beginning his sojourn up and down the right side of her neck.
“Perhaps I’m trying to indicate that if I am this attentive with respect to your culinary longings, I’ll be even more attentive with respect to satisfying other- ah- appetites.”
Gabriel sighed with contentment at the soft warmth of the young woman he treasured in his arms, his nose buried in long, soft, vanilla-scented hair.
It was a good distraction, for it stopped her from thinking about Saturday morning and what Gabriel looked like under his clothes, wet from the shower, dropping a small, purple towel…
“Panting, twisting, touching, yearning, giving, and finally and most gloriously, coming.”
“He’s worried she’ll stand up and throw her bra at him, or hold up an ‘I heart Emerson’ poster.”
As soon as she removed her pashmina, a pair of jealous blue eyes darted across the table, hungrily taking in her newly exposed skin before making a hasty retreat.
It was too dark to see his face, but she recognized his voice and the strange sensation that hummed up and down her arms in reaction to his touch.
“Gabriel, your life is like a series of locked, secret rooms.”
Gabriel moved closer, and Julia shut her eyes as his scent washed over her.
She disappeared with her drink, and Gabriel assumed she was using the opportunity to steel herself for the next revelation from his miserable, damned existence.
Perpetually available but mindless orgasms can become tiresome, Julianne.”
“And I possess certain skills. “
“My past indiscretions notwithstanding, my tastes run to inflicting mad, passionate pleasure on my lovers and not pain, I assure you.”
“I think someone needs dessert.”
When their lips met, his hands trailed down to her lower back, and he imagined caressing her naked flesh.
Watching him undress was even sexier than watching him in a purple towel that was far too small.
“Being without you, Julianne, is like enduring an endless night without stars.”
Two almost lovers were tangled around each other, their naked legs entwined in a large bed under an ice-blue silk duvet and white Frette sheets.
Righting herself with a curse, she saw that the offending speed bump was in reality three white shopping bags with the words Holt Renfrew emblazoned on them.
“A present from a friend does nothing to inhibit your free will or your personal autonomy.”
Clearly, Gabriel has a thing for heels…in all kinds of women’s footwear.
It was all hunger and promise and giving and need.
The sight of Julia’s sudden and intense arousal hit him sharply, not just in his own heightened state of excitement, but emotionally as well.
He didn’t miss the alienation that came from going home alone from a lover’s apartment and washing her traces from his body as if they were contagions.
“It’s going to take all of my self- control not to spirit you away to the Victorian furniture exhibit so I can make love to you on one of the four-poster beds.”
Professor Emerson is an ass man.
“It was want and need and desperation and deep, deep unconditional love now made free through the telling of dark, hidden secrets.”
“She was his atonement.”
You are a love god, amongst other things.
“Gabriel’s foreplay was the equivalent of a scorched earth seduction.”
“In her dream, they’d fallen into bed naked and made love for hours. Gabriel had placed his body over hers and held her gaze like a magnet as he entered into her slowly, until the two became one. An eternal circle with no end and no beginning.”
“Oh gods of all virgins who are planning to have sex with their sex-god ( no blasphemy intended) boyfriends, please don’t let me spontaneously combust when he finally takes me to bed. I really need a Gabriel-induced orgasm.”
“He owned her, body and soul.”
“Your best quality is your heart, Gabriel, not your sexual prowess. It’s your heart I fell in love with.”
“We can take our time tonight and just relax. Although I think it would be nice if we were to try out the bathtub. Together.”
“He caught her eye and leaned forward to whisper in her ear, ‘Behold, thou art fair, my beloved.’ “
“I want to explore your senses–sound, taste, sight, touch. I want to take my time arousing and exciting you.”
How had he believed that nameless, faceless orgasms would ever satisfy him?
“When I am an old man and I can remember nothing else, I will remember this moment.”
It should be a crime to have such gifted fingers…and what a mouth…
More of this and them…she wanted to see him come apart above her and know that they had done this together.
“Look at me. I want to see your eyes when you come.”
In the wee hours of the morning, the Edenic lovers wound themselves around each other, flesh against flesh, sleepy and sated, in a large white bed.
Lightness and darkness, innocence and experience, kissed and caressed in the warmth and acceptance created by their love.
Elena:
“Sometimes goodness doesn’t tell everything it knows. Sometimes goodness waits for the appropriate time and does the best it can with what it has.”
“I’ve always had a terrible weakness for beautiful but sad things.”
“When I told you that I was intending to worship you with my body, I meant it. With all my heart. I will never take from you. I will only give. In my bed and outside of it.”
“You blossom under kindness, don’t you? Like a rose.”
“For the rest of my life, I’ll dream of hearing your voice breathe my name.”
“For if you truly believe that kindness is never wasted, you have to hold tightly to that belief even when the kindness is thrown back in your face”
“Everything is up to you. You can rescue me or banish me with a single word.”
“Gabriel kissed Julia as if he knew her, as if she belonged to him. His kiss was passionate and full of emotion, as if every fiber of his being had melted and spread itself on his lips only to be given to her.”
“You’re here now. Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra.”
“Have you ever fallen asleep in the arms of a boy before, Beatrice?” She shook her head. “Then I’m glad I’m your first.”
“Maybe goodness is enough to expose evil for what it really is, sometimes. Rather than trying to stop evil with more evil.”
“No matter who came into his bedroom, no matter which girl Gabriel brought home to warm his bed, beatrice was always there. Beatrice was ever present.”
“For despite all her defiance, there was a flame in her that recognized its twin in Gabriel. And that flame could not be extinguished, unless Julia was willing to extinguish a part of herself.”
“Your reality is far more beautiful and alluring than any dream. I’d choose you over the dream anytime.”
“Conosco i segni dell’antica fiamma. I felt it the first time I took your hand.”
“If I were to taste your mouth now, I couldn’t answer for the consequences.”
“It’s so clear to me now. I drank in your goodness and it satisfied my longings.”
“In their orchard, which was Paradise, there were only two almost -lovers and no one and nothing else.”
” I burn for you, Julianne, but it’s more than a physical hunger. I crave you, all of you.”
“When I am an old man and I can remember nothing else, I will remember this moment. The first time my eyes beheld an angel in the flesh. I will remember your body and your eyes, your beautiful face and breasts, your curves and this.” He traced his hand around her navel before dragging it lightly to the top of her lower curls. “I will remember your scent and your touch and how it felt to love you. But most of all, I will remember how it felt to gaze at true beauty, both inside and out. For you are fair, my beloved, in soul and in body, generous of spirit and generous of heart. And I will never see anything this side of heaven more beautiful than you”
“After all we’ve shared, I just want to hold you and be close. Rest in my arms and know that I love you.”
Tamie and Elena
Filed under: Books, Favorite Authors, Gabriel Emerson, Gabriel's Inferno, Quotes, Sylvain Reynard Tagged: favorite author, favorite book, Favorite Quotes, Gabriel Emerson, Gabriel's Inferno, Sylvain Reynard
