Gretchen Masse

“I will not fall in love with you," she said. "I can't let myself. I won't."

"That's all right. I'll love you enough for the both of us.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Eternal

“Colin decided then and there that the female mind was a strange and incomprehensible organ - one which no man should even attempt to understand. There wasn't a woman alive who could go from point A to B without stopping at C, D, X, and 12 along the way.”
― Julia Quinn, Romancing Mister Bridgerton

“Beside him a tiny elderly woman was leaning on a cane, studying him with curiosity. Since good manners seemed to require that he speak to her, Jon cast about for some sort of polite conversation pertinent to the occasion. “I hate funerals, don’t you?” He said.
“I rather like them,” she said smugly. “At my age, I regard each funeral I attend as a personal triumph, because I was not the guest of honor.”
― Judith McNaught, Paradise

“She felt both relaxed and protected with him, at least from outside forces. Nothing, it seemed, could protect her from him, and tonight she wasn’t even certain she wanted to be. Claimed, and mated. She was his, but was he hers? And if he was, what in hell did they do about it?
“I don’t even know what you want,” she said fretfully, beginning to lose herself in rising sensation.
“This,” he muttered in a dark, rough tone. “You.
Everything.”
― Linda Howard, Cry No More