Nour

“And now, dear Emma, I'll show you just what you have to be wary of," he said, and his head moved down, blotting out the light.
This was no slow, sensuous caress of mouth and lip. This was no chaste salute, nor was it the wet awkwardness of an untried boy or a randy old man. He opened his mouth over hers and kissed her, using his tongue, his teeth, and all the clever weapons he had in his arsenal.
She told herself she was being kissed by a practiced rake. She told herself it meant nothing, it was a trick, an act, a small skill that anyone could acquire. She told herself that as her body trembled and melted beneath him, as her mouth opened to his skillful insistence. She told herself it meant absolutely nothing as his tongue pushed into her mouth, and the moan that came from deep inside her had to be one of displeasure, didn't it?
It wasn't one kiss, it was twenty, it was a long series of unending kisses, leading one into another, so that she barely had time to begin to regain her sanity when he stripped it away once more. He kissed her eyelids, the side of her mouth, the beating pulse at the base of her neck. He kissed her nose and her chin, he bit her earlobe, and then he covered her mouth once more, kissing her with a devastating thoroughness that had her damp and trembling in his arms.
His hands were on her petticoats, slowly drawing them up her long legs, and her hips cradled him. He was hard against her, she belatedly recognized that fact, and the knowledge panicked her.e wanted her, his body wanted to claim hers, and there was no way she could stop him. No way, God help her, that she wanted to stop him.
He broke the kiss, rising up over her as she lay on the bed, staring down at her with a hooded expression in his eyes. His mouth was wet from hers, and his breathing was slightly labored. It would have been the only sign of his arousal, had it not been for the heat pressing against her hips.
"Do you want me, Emma?" he murmured, his voice low and insistent. "You don't have to say a word. Just put your mouth against mine."
Oh, God, she did want him, as terrifying as that notion was. She wanted to touch him, to feel his skin against hers, and she felt a dark burning deep inside her that she knew only he could assuage. She wanted his mouth, she wanted his heart, she wanted his soul.”
― Anne Stuart, To Love a Dark Lord

“Lying there, feeling safe in his tight embrace, a tear escaped my resolute eye and darkened his purple shirt. I usually do not cry when I am afraid, but invariably did when I felt safe and cocooned, like I felt in the confines of his strong, sure arms.”
― Kavipriya Moorthy, Dirty Martini

“Girls have always been told that their value is tied to their appearance; their accomplishments are always magnified if they're pretty and diminished if they're not. Even worse, some girls get the message that they can get through life relying on just their looks, and then they never develop their minds. [...]

Being pretty is fundamentally a passive quality; even what you work at it, you're working at being passive.”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“Assumptions are quick exits for lazy minds that like to graze out in the fields without bother.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem