Pin Chu

“He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. “You are my country, Desdemona.” Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. “My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.”

She gasped.

His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. “You’ll never hear old Blake say something like that.”

She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in anticipation? Trepidation?

“Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose.”
― Connie Brockway, As You Desire

“Love without friendship is like a kite, aloft only when the winds are favorable. Friendship is what gives love its wings.”
― Sherry Thomas, Ravishing the Heiress

“For what is love but a great rebellion against caution and sense?”
― Meredith Duran, At Your Pleasure

“My incomparable beloved,

Seven months you have been gone, and I fear you will never return. I await your brief, infrequent letters like a boy, desperate for any small indication that you remember I exist, hoping for evidence that you tire of that foreign land where you now live. I read your missives a hundred times for the slightest intimation that you will be coming home. The part of my mind that does nothing but wait grows daily, and soon nothing will be left to attend to life's duties. One word, my love, just one; that is all I seek. One word to let me know that you will not stay away forever, and that I will at least have your presence and friendship in my life, even if I can never have your passion and your love."

--Julian Hampton to Penelope, Countess of Glasbury”
― Madeline Hunter, The Romantic