“Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go--embrace me, Jane.”

“It must be that I am dreaming, and that I shall awaken in a moment to see that awful knife descending toward my heart- kiss me, dear, just once before I lose my dream forever."-Jane-”

“But if you were Matched," I say softly, "what do you think she'd be life?" "You," he says, almost before I've finished. "You." We do not kiss. We do nothing bu hold on and breather, but still I know. I cannot go gently now.”

“Grace Taylor, I am going to kiss you right now and you are not going to run away from me, because you have no excuse now. Then you are going to go back upstairs to be and all you are going to think about are my fucking lips on yours and nothing else.”

“I’ll be your family now,” he says.“I love you,” I say.I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then. I don’t know why I didn’t say it when he could hear it. Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone. But now I think the scary thing was not saying it before it was almost too late. Not saying it before it was almost too late for me.I am his, and he is mine, and it has been that way all along.He stares at me. I wait with my hands clutching his arms for stability as he considers his response.He frowns at me. “Say it again.”“Tobias,” I say, “I love you.”His skin is slippery with water and he smells like sweat and my shirt sticks to his arms when he slides them around me. He presses his face to my neck and kisses me right above the collarbone, kisses my cheek, kisses my lips.“I love you, too,” he says.”

“Well, you're going to have to put your arms around me. Then hold on really tight. You may want to close your eyes too.""All that is for transporting?""Was there something else you'd prefer to be doing?"Fortunately, Dad intervened before I could respond to his comment. "Really, Chase? Still in the room here. That's my daughter you're flirting with. You really want to go there?”