“Five seconds, and my body's humming. I go half-man, half-machine, and my thoughts go straight to touching her more, to how far I want to go, how far she might want to go, and damn, I start to hurt. No amount of music or hard work will fix this. My body's a beast. A beast that's been held back too long.”

“I let her go. She didn't step back. “I need to either get you out of my system so I can go back to my life, or fall in love with you so much it changes my life completely. Ever since I saw you, I wanted you.” My jaw clenched. Did she know how hard that was to admit? “You break all my rules and scare me half to death.”

“I wanted to do it for you,” he said. “I wanted to show you how much I would do,how far I would go. How hard I would work.”

“But fear is confusing. It tears you in two. Half of you wants to run far, far away, but the other half is paralyzed, frozen, immovable. And the hard part is that you never know which half is going to win.”

“Before she could finish that thought, Dare kissed her on the top of the head. "You're more fragile than you realize, Molly Alexander." He caught her chin, turning her face toward him. "Don't push yourself. I want you - that's not going to change. I can't say I won't kiss you, but how far and how fast we go is up to you.”

“That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real.”