“He'd been waiting for a love fraught with passion and drama; it hadn't even occurred to him that true love might be something that was utterly comfortable and just plain easy.”

“Then when Matt had come along it hadn't been fireworks, passion and fights and drama. It had been low- key, sweet, lovely. But that didn't meant it wasn't the real thing. It never had done. Just because it wasn't suprising hadn't meant it wasn't right.”

“He'd seen when she began to panic, but he hadn't offered comfort like other Doms or changed his plans. He'd just waited her out. She could hate him a little for that.”

“Let us not confuse love with passion. Love, True Love is eternal. Passion just rides as far as the thought of love will take him. Never blame love for passions faults.”

“But he'd never been in love. He knew that was what he was really asking himself. He'd never given himself to someone else completely. He'd always held something back, even if he hadn't known that he was doing it. He'd reserved the deepest part of him, the part that truly was him, because he'd feared that once he gave it away he would never get it back.”

“And in the horror of his realization over Simone was the knowledge that he'd never really loved Satara. He'd wanted to know love so badly that he'd contorted the concept of it to fit a relationship that it had no part in. This time love had come up behind him and clubbed him on the head when he hadn't been expecting it.”