Iliada

“And this is the potency a first kiss should have: it should be earned. The moments leading up to it should be as tense as a crossbow drawn back. The reader should want it as badly as the hero and heroine, and feel as satisfied and transported and transformed as the hero and heroine in the wake of it. There are different ways to use kisses in a romance, but that first kiss is so meaningful, a pinnacle, and can be more intimate than sex.”
― Julie Anne Long

“Her voice was a thread, but still she managed to sound acerbic. “I believe it’s the devil’s job to tempt me. Not yours.”
“And the difference between the devil and I would be . . . ?”
“None that I can detect.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“I took a fall,” he confirmed evenly. After a hesitation doubtless only Phoebe noticed.
And Phoebe didn’t know whether it was the sort of fall Lucifer took, or the sort poets wrote about when love struck, or even if it was an innuendo at all, because she suspected everything was destined to sound like an innuendo from now on.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“The wrong man could have brought it all crashing down,” she told him. “A different man might have collapsed under the weight of the responsibility.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won