“It should have been awkward. They’d taken their relationship from casual to over-the-top intimate in six-point-two seconds, without all the typical steps in between.But all Dani could think, wrapped in Carter’s arms, was that finally she was right where she was supposed to be.”

“Then he strode across the room and kissed her.It was a crazy, impulsive act, but the minute his lips touched hers he knew it was the right thing to do.She tasted like sex and sin and forbidden fruit, and he couldn’t get enough.”

“That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been—no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among intimates, but it was understood without saying that if women began to yield for such reasons as that, marriage and society would not last long. Any man who spoke up for Mrs Dempster probably believed in Free Love. Certainly he associated sex with pleasure, and that put him in a class with filthy thinkers like Cece Athelstan.”

“You told me once dear, you really loved meAnd no one else could come between.But now you've left me and love another;You have shattered all my dreams.”

“Then all of a sudden he'd taken two giant steps towards me, and before I knew it, had taken my face into his hands and the rest of me into the darkness of his wings and we were kissing each other in my little bedroom, in my little house, in my little town, while the mountains soared into the sky.”

“Elsie, who had a lot of energy and no shame...she seduced me. It was not a success, from Elsie's point of view, because the orgasm for women was just coming into general popularity then, and she didn't have one.”

“Arriane sized her up, tapping one finger against her lips. "Perfect," she said, stepping forward to loop her arm through Luce's. "I was just thinking I could really use a new slave.”