“And his kiss wasn't at all like his smile. It wasn't crooked or one-sided. It was quite simply... perfect.”

“He rolled me under him to kiss me. It wasn't a gentle kiss like at the beach, or passionate kiss like the one that happened in his room. It was desperate. Desperate and hungry and sad.A good-bye kiss.”

“Laurent wasn't loved. Laurent wasn't liked. Even among his own men, who would follow him off a cliff, there was the unequivocal consensus that Laurent was, as Orlant had once described him, a cast iron bitch, that it was a very bad idea to get on his bad side, and that as for his good side, he didn't have one.”

“It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them.”

“It wasn't just that Lucy wanted to help him. She wasn't as selfless as that. She was madly attracted to him. She was attracted to all of the normal things and the weird things, too, like the back of his neck and his thumbs on the edge of his desk and the way his hair stuck out on one side like a little wing over his ear. She caught his smell once, and it made her dizzy. She couldn't fall asleep that night.”

“And holy hell, if his smile wasn't one of those that made a girl's heart fall over on itself.”