“She opened her mouth to answer, but he was already kissing her. She had kissed him so many times—soft gentle kisses, hard and desperate ones, brief brushes of the lips that said good-bye, and kisses that seemed to go on for hours—and this was no different. The way the memory of someone who had once lived in a house might linger even after they were gone, like a sort of psychicimprint,herbody rememberedJace.Remembered the way he tasted, the slant of his mouth over hers, his scars under her fingers, the shape of his body under her hands.”

“He took her face in his hands and claimed her mouth with his. It felt like he had been drowning, and she was his life raft. This was not a soft, sensual kiss. This was a kiss of desperation. A kiss of need, not want. And Cali needed it just as much as Matthew.”

“He only stopped walking when his arms were around her and his mouth was on hers. She made a surprised little squeak, but oh, God, her lips were so soft, and he kissed her hard, too hard, maybe, one hand sliding through her silky, cool hair, gripping the back of her head, a kiss that reached right in and clamped his heart in a fist…the taste of her, the smell of her, her softness melded against him. The kind of kiss that ruined a man.Then he let her go, turned around and left her standing on the dock, one hand over her lips, her dog standing at her side.”

“Her perfume enveloped him as he reached for her. His hands smoothed over soft fabric before finding the warmth of her skin. She lifted her mouth to his and kissed him hungrily, greedily. She tasted so good. Like sin. Like every dirty thought he’d ever had.”

“she kissed him with all the aching longing that being this close to him evoked; she kissed him in all the ways he had ever kissed her, feeling faint with joy when he began to kiss her back, his mouth moving with fierce tenderness, then opening with fiery demand over hers, until their breaths were mingled gasps, and they were straining to one another.”

“She kissed him in the exact same way he wanted to fuck her. Hard, insistent, determined, as though burning him with her mouth. Branding her taste on his lips, marking him as her own.”