“There wasn't a woman alive who could resist a man who paid attention to her, who made her feel like she was the only other person in his world.”

“He was the kind of guy that made a woman want to rip his shirt open and watch the buttons scatter along with her inhibitions.”

“Gideon knew exactly what I liked. Not because I’d told him, but because he paid attention to everything about me.”

“The kiss he gave her was fierce and passionate, relaying so much more than lust and desire. She clung to him, soaking up the flood of emotion from a man known for his reserve and austerity. This was why she could blossom for him, why she felt fearless and audacious. They were so much alike in that way, their still waters running deeper than most.”

“If I could,” he went on, “I would remain like this indefinitely—clasped by you, held inside you, a part of you—without moving at all. When we make love, I fight climax with everything I have. I don’t want to come; I do not want it to end. No matter how long I make it last, it isn’t nearly long enough. I am furious when I cannot hold back any longer. Why, Jess? If all I seek is the physical relief of natural lust, just as I would seek sleep or food, why would I deny myself?”She turned her head and caught his mouth with hers, kissing him desperately.“Tell me you understand,” he demanded, his lips moving beneath hers. “Tell me you feel it, too.”“I feel you,” she breathed, as intoxicated by his ardency as she was by the finest claret. “You have become everything to me.”

“And yet I understood the alienation of being around others who couldn't really see you or chose not to. I'd felt the self-loathing that came with being a fraud, protraying an image of what you wished you could be but weren't. I'd lived with the fear that people you loved might turn away from you if they ever got to know the true person hidden inside.”

“He's a Sentinel. An angel created to hunt and punish other angels. He was designed and built to feel no emotion, to function almost like a machine. One mission, one purpose, no deviations. But he's deviated a lot over the years. Now more so than ever before. And he's paid the price. He's paying it even now.”