“It wasn’t an easy, sweet kiss like I’d imagined my first would be, but frustrated and hungry. That was good, better than easy and sweet, because after everything, I was frustrated and hungry for him, too.”

“I'll be the way I was when I first met him. Then maybe he'll like me again. I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”

“I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”

“The kiss ignited like a rocket flash. Not that this surprised her. Everything pertaining to Mark seemed to burn hot and fast. Frustration, lust…His mouth was rough, hot and hungry on hers as he pulled her closer, taking control. She heard herself moan, kissing him with helpless desperation. If dessert was her usual drug of choice, it’d just been replaced because she couldn’t seem to get enough of him.”

“It wasn’t like a first kiss because we knew each other too intimately for that. And it wasn’t like a last kiss because we’d only just begun. It was the kiss you spend your whole life waiting for. The kiss you wish would swallow you whole so you’d always be living it. This was the kiss of a lifetime, shared with a woman I’d spent a few lifetimes waiting for.”

“Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun. ”