It was as though he had awakened something inside her. All those desires she had felt in passing had culminated, growing deeper, hungrier, darker.

Nothing is as deadly as the love of a powerful man.

Some plants were pyrophytic and only germinated when ravaged by fire. Gavin had scorched her with the savagery of his cruel passions until she had been conditioned to bloom in the flames.

Nobody had ever looked at her like that—as if she were filled with such lethal sweetness that craving could be synonymous with ruin.

She was full of fire and he had never wanted to burn so badly.

Maybe that was why the French called orgasms “las petites morts”: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug.

Hate me, then,” he breathed. “Break yourself into a thousand pieces and deny me each and every one of them. Because I am never letting you go.

For what is magic, but passion freed from reason?