“Excellent. We keep your furniture. Whose bed?”“Yours.”“Why mine?”“It’s bigger, for one.”“And for another?”“Mine doesn’t have the sort of headboard you can tie someone to. I’ve always sort of wanted to do that.”“Bend over. Now. Take off your pants and bend over. I’ll be done in five minutes. No one will ever know.”

“If it looks like you have pink eye, I’ll take a look at it. Drop your pants and bend over.”

“The rules took a while to sort out. Lena and Carmen wanted to focus on friendship-type rules, stuff about keeping in touch with one another over the summer, and making sure the Pants kept moving from one girl to the next. Tibby preferred to focus on random things you could and couldn't do in the Pants --- like picking your nose.”

“I love you, too, James, but that doesn’t give you a free pass.” “No, it doesn’t. Being your Dom does that, Love. I’ve compromised far more for you than I’ve ever done for anyone or anything in my life. Controlling you sexually is something I won’t be bending on...”

“That’s the funny thing,” she said. “Men always want to die for something. For someone. I can see the appeal. You do it once and it’s done. No more worrying, not knowing, about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I know you all think it sounds brave, but I’ll tell you something even braver. To struggle and fight for the ones you love today. And then do it all over again the next day. Every day. For your whole life. It’s not as romantic, I admit. But it takes a lot of courage to live for someone, too.”

“From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.”