“And could it even really be called a kiss? It had been very, veryshort. And did it mean anything if the kisser (him) had been feelingterribly grateful to the kissee (her) and possibly even indebted, inthe most elemental of ways?She’d saved his life, after all. A kiss was not entirely out oforder.Plus, he had said, “Forgive me.” Did it count as a kiss if thekisser had asked for forgiveness?Honoria thought not.”

“He had to kiss her. He had to. It was as basic and elemental as his breath, his blood, his very soul. And when he did...The earth stopped spinning.The birds stopped singing.Everything in the world came to a halt, everything but him and her and the feather-light kiss that connected them.”

“He kissed and held her like it was the last time, but then again, he always did that, because there had always been that possibility of him losing her.”

“He had kissed me. Put his demon tongue in my mouth. I had kissed him back. Yet I had a boyfriend. Adam. Who I believe I’ve mentioned. More than once.Boyfriend named Adam, demon named Levi kissing me—that pretty much meant I had cheated on my boyfriend, didn’t it?Didn’t mean to do that. Yikes.I bit my fingernails and knocked on Brandon’s door and tried to rationalize my way around it. It hadn’t been a premeditated kiss. It hadn’t been initiated by me. Did that really make it cheating? Or just a sort of accidental meeting of the mouths?Shouldn’t there be like a five-second rule, anyway? Like dropping food on the floor.If you retrieve it immediately, you can still eat it. If the kiss lasted less than say, a minute, it didn’t count. Right?”

“If I thought being kissed by Tyr had been what kissing was all about, I had been wrong. This kiss trampled Tyr's kiss, threw it to the ground, and danced on its grave.”

“Nefret had always had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts. 'Did she cry?' she asked sweetly. 'And then you kissed her? You shouldn't have done that. I'm sure you meant well, but kissing someone out of pity is always a mistake.”