She recognized the signs of danger. When she’d said to the duke that she had a certain effect on men, she hadn’t been exaggerating. It was not every man and it was not all the time, but when the effect happened, proposals flew like confetti and all parties involved usually ended up feeling quite mortified.

That was how he would go on tormenting her, after his physical departure from her life. A baroque plan, byzantine even, a plan that both pleased and shamed him.He awaited only the night, this one grotesque, terrible night.

She touched him, placing her hand over his curled fingers, straightening them so that they were palm to palm, then she interlaced her fingers with his. Her fingertips were icy. A silent, dangerous thrill coursed through him. He wanted to pull her atop him and show her what awaited a foolish young woman who slipped into a man's bedroom in the dead of the night after having devoured him all evening with those dark, intense eyes of hers, setting his blood to simmer over three long hours.

He smiled at her. And it hit her like a mallet to the temple, the realization that she was in love with him. Stupidly, dreadfully in love with him.Overnight, she'd become a fool.

Tenderness, that most alien and disconcerting of emotions, swelled and billowed in her. She picked up a cherry and stared down at the soft, bright-red fruit. “I love you.”The last time she'd declared her love he'd thrown it right back in her face. She waited uncertainly for his response. She didn't even have to wait a second. He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. “I love you more.”- Gigi and Camden

I’ve always loved you,” he said, his eyes a blue that was almost violet. “You know this.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I only wonder whether I deserve such devotion.”“Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is,” he said with a quiet intensity. “What I give, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation.

What is withdrawal?""Let's see, since you know your scripture so well, was that Onan? Yes, that bugger. What he did.""Spilling his seed on the floor?""Yes," continued her husband, "it would be lovely if I could take you and spill my seed somewhere else. Not on the floor, mind you. But perhaps on your very soft belly. Perhaps even on your splendid breasts. and perhaps, if I'm in a really terrible mood, I'll make you swallow it.- Vere to Elissande

He was a god above her, powerful, beautiful, larger than life. The light brought out the latent gold of his hair. The shadows contoured the perfect form of his body. Light and shadows converged in his eyes, bright lust, dark anger, and something else. Something else entirely. She recognized it because she’d seen it in the mirror so many times: a bleak, austere loneliness.

He felt as if he stood at the very top of a high cliff. Take a step back and all was safe and familiar. But going forward required a singular leap of faith—and he was a man of little faith, particularly when it came to himself. But he wanted her to look at him again as if he were full of possibilities. As if they were full of possibilities.

Was it possible—was it at all possible that she could come out of her most desperate choice with a man as clever as Odysseus who looked like Achilles and made love like Paris…?