“The first kiss plummeted him down a hole and popped him out into a world he thought he could get along in—as if he’d been pulling hard the wrong way and was now turned around headed downstream.”

“I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.”

“Not a frog, I hope?” he asked…She shook her head. “No. And if it was I wouldn’t kiss it, I promise you. I might kiss a prince if I could be sure he’d turn into a frog, but not the other way around.”

“Perhaps he had been waiting all along for someone to knock him down and allow him to drop the weight he’d so faithfully carried.”

“He pulled her close and kissed her the way he’d been wanting to for weeks. There was the smallest of hesitations then she kissed him back, her body straining toward his almost desperately. She tasted of salty tears and need and he tightened his arms around her, wanting to take away the pain he’d caused her, needing to make things right between them.”

“She shook her head, but it was too late, and he was pulling her into his arms and bending his head to hers and she supposed that she could have stopped him. Should have stopped him. But no power in the world could have prevented her lips from parting in a sharp little gasp of remembered pleasure as he drove his mouth down like a man who had been starved of kisses.”