Corinna

“I didn't want to give you the one last part of myself that I couldn't take back. And then you were gone... And I realized it was already yours. It had been since the beginning. Except that I hadn't told you. It drove me mad, the thought that you would never know.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Dreaming of You

“Oh!” This was said brightly, as if she was happy he had noticed. “I decided I needed my own workspace, instead of constantly infringing upon yours. So I had a few of the boys move a desk in here.”

He stared at the petite, feminine, desk that was pushed against his. And wondered how the bloody hell she had managed to convince men who were terrified of him to move the desk inside his domain.

“Absolutely not.”

***

Two hours later, he was still scowling as she happily worked on . . . whatever the hell it was she was working on. Across from him. At her desk. How the hell . . .

He remembered saying no. He remembered cursing. Threatening her unborn children. Then there was a sort of hazy period of smiles and calm words. Then she had touched the back of his hand with her naked fingers.

And now, here he was with . . . her desk . . . pressed to his—surreptitiously watching her scratch her paper, the tip of her tongue poking from the side of her mouth as she worked.”
― Anne Mallory, In Total Surrender

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“...Go somewhere else. Somewhere safer.”

Anywhere else. God, please. Or he was likely to do something horribly awful, like surrender his sanity and kiss her.”
― Anne Mallory, In Total Surrender