“This was maybe the first time she’d done it when she’d felt the true intimacy of it. The first time she’d done it because she wanted to express her feelings for a guy in some new way she hadn’t before. The first time it meant something.The fact was, sex with a man she cared for was making all other sex pale in comparison. No wonder sex with Mike had been the best of her life from the very start—caring for him had been…destiny.Destiny in Destiny.”

“He made a careful rehearsal of some of their bits of talk--why had she said this? what had she meant by that? why had she done the other? He dwelt on these matters with an absorbed speculation, and with a young man of Ogden's temperament speculation was but the first step on the way to love.”

“She let the relaxing song waft over and through her as she lost herself in everything around her: the millions of stars glittering above, the soft quilt beneath her, the man whose hand slipped warmly into hers. And she began to understand something she hadn't only a few short minutes before; she began to feel a certain, undeniable truth seeping into her skin, her muscles, her very bones. And when the song came to its sweet, peaceful conclusion, she continued peering up at the sky even as she leaned her head over to rest it on Lucky's shoulder. And she whispered, "You love me." He kept gazing upward, too, his answer coming softly. "Yeah, I do." And it sounded ... like it wasn't a surprise to him at all. The new knowledge made Tessa's skin tingle even as her body filled with warmth. And she pulled back just slightly to peer over at him, this man who loved her. He hadn't put it into words, but he hadn't needed to---because he'd shown her, in so many sweet ways.”

“And even later, when for the first time in her life she had lain in bed with a man and said his name involuntarily or said it truly meaning him, the name she was screaming and saying was not his at all.”

“They fell into each other's arms and she basked in his warmth, his strength, the hardness of his body against hers. He ran his hands through her hair and spoke low in her ear. "I don't know the right way to say this stuff, Tessa, but ... you're the best thing that's happened to me. I've never felt like this before, I've never ... been happy like this.”

“He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned. ”

“She wanted him. Not in the sweet way of poetry, though there was that music in the symmetry of his body, in the careful meshing of bone and sinew and flesh that made him.Her want was raw. Physical. She felt it in the palms of her hands and the flesh of her lips and the heaviness of her breasts.In her life, she’d been hungry, and thirsty. She’d needed sleep. She had never, in her life, needed to touch a man.”