“It's just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it's time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.”

“It's a strange new world out there and the rules have changed: It's every princess for herself.”

“Being touched by Jericho Barrons with kindness makes you feel like you the biggest, most savage lion in the jungle, lying down, placing yourhead it its mouth and, rather than taking your life, it licks you andpurrs.”

“As he fills me I wonder if – in the same way that sex makes its own unique perfume – we don’t really “make” love. As in create, manufacture, evoke an independent element in the air around us, and if enough of us did it really well, for real, not just for the hell of it, we could change the world.”

“I was about to look away when he reached across the seat, touched my jaw with his long, strong, beautiful fingers, and caressed my face.Being touched by Jericho Barrons with kindness makes you feel like you must be the most special person in the world. It’s like walking up to the biggest, most savage lion in the jungle, lying down, placing your head it its mouth and, rather than taking your life, it licks you and purrs.”

“I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.”

“As he fills me, I wonder if—in the same way that sex makes its own unique perfume—we don’t really “make” love. As in create, manufacture, evoke an independent element in the air around us, and if enough of us did it really well, for real, not just for the hell of it, we could change the world. Because when he’s in me, I feel the space around us changing, charging, and it seems to set off some kind of feedback loop, where the more he touches me, the more I need him to.”