“I sat there in the darkness, with their skin clsoe to me, and I felt lifted up and wrapped with kindness. And very small, because I didn't deserve this, but small the way a mouse in its den is small: warm and safe and protected.”

“I was one of those people who stumbled into things, who followed whims and took side roads, instead of finding some goal to pursue forward with unflagging commitment. I didn't even know what I wanted to be when I grew up, what I wanted to major in when I went to college. And I had always been blithely convinced that if I followed the side roads for long enough I'd trip over something wonderful, that thing you never know you're looking for until you land on it that suddenly makes the universe a much bigger place than it ever had been before.”

“There was this girl,” I said. "l mean-” All of a sudden I felt flustered, and added, ”We were just friends.””No such thing.””We were.””Look. Despite what you may have heard, people have sex all the time with people they don't love, or particulary care about, or sometimes can't even stand. So why in the world do people say that it's just friends, like it doesn't mean as much, if you're not having sex? Real friendship is true and forever and with all your heart. It's not Relationship Lite.”

“We'd been twelve years old together. We'd shared the convictions that only twelve year olds can share, that love is simple and powerful and easy and inevitable.”

“Evident in every small act of kindness, it was love as a verb. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo filled past.”

“I need to devour you."Those words manage to knock the air right back out of my lungs, and my head spinsas one of his hands skims around my body. He splays it across the small of my back, pulling me closer to him, and leaning over until his lips are a centimeter from my collarbone."Sienna?" he growls, and I murmur to acknowledge him. "I'm going to taste you."He wasn't asking me, he was flat out telling me what was going to happen between us, and yet I felt myself nod, felt my body mold against his the moment his warm lips sought out the center of my throat."You smell like apples." he wispers harshly before his tongue darts out to trace the column of my thorat. I moan, letting my head fall all the way back."And you taste like the best kind of sin.”

“They might not need me; but they might.I'll let my head be just in sight;A smile as small as mine might bePrecisely their necessity.”