“Watching her, he saw again how she teetered between adolescence and adulthood, with a raw sensuality that had to deposit her in a kind of no-man's land--too much a woman for boys her own age, too young for fully adult men.”

“I am an anomaly - a woman alone, too young to be widowed and too old to be looking for a mate. I occupy that no man's land - no woman's land - between youth and old age.”

“He kissed like no man she'd ever known. There was something about him, a rawness, an earthy sensuality that bordered on barbaric, something she'd never be able to explain to someone else. A woman had to be kissed by Dageus MacKeltar to fully understand how devastating it was. How it could bring a woman to her knees.”

“In adolescence she thought it was too early to choose; now, in young adulthood, she was convinced it was too late to change.”

“She was too dependent on what other people thought of her, and that was her downfall. She cared too much. She was only what other people saw in her—-that is, what she imagined they saw in her.”

“She doubted he'd take too kindly to her fighting with them, no matter how much he liked having her in his bed.”