Cecilia Grant Quotes

Don't dare fancy you'll be the man to teach me the pleasures of tenderness." Tenderness was a rat whose neck she wrung with her own hands before hurling it over the hedge to rot with feelings.

No doubt she'd thought she was doing him a kindness, urging him to kick up his heels and loosen his too-tight cravat and learn to savor careless pleasures. As though he hadn't heard such urgings before, from every feckless acquaintance made uncomfortable by his example of propriety, or every heedless one who sailed through life never noticing that it was vigilant people, the people standing back from the merriment, who stomped out the fiery raisins dropped by others and kept everything from going up in flames.

I've never asked you to give the least considerations to my feelings.
He could picture her holding the word with fingertips at arm's length, like a scullery maid disposing of a dead rat.

He'd shut the door on the subject of loss, thrown all the bolts, and shoved a heavy table up against it for good measure.

There was little point in mourning a thing you'd never had, and so she didn't mourn, most days.

Even two people who are no more than friends by daylight can fell prey to the influence of a secret dark room.

She said no, and he didn't assume she only needed the right sort of persuasion. He credited her with knowing her own mind. I vow it's a pity he hasn't any money. A lady would be lucky to be kept by such a man.

Wicked, to be sure." He repeated the word as though tasting it, his gaze now following her finger's progress. "Perhaps you'd better punish me."


Good Lord, what next? "Punish you, indeed." She advanced her finger just to the base of his erection and stopped. "Suppose I were to walk out of this room and leave you here alone until you remembered your decency. Would that be punishment enough?"


He smiled as though he were teaching her chess and she'd just made a clever move. "Maybe." His eyes came to her face, and wandered in leisurely, thorough fashion down her body and back to her still finger. "Or maybe you ought to touch yourself. Pleasure yourself, and force me to watch."


"Now I know beyond question that you've confused me with someone else." Aplomb had company: his every shameless utterance was waking strange--or not so strange--sensations that spiraled from her core on out. "And I doubt you would take it as punishment, quite."


"Darling, I would take it as torture." Again he twisted against his bonds, so much power at her mercy. "Because you'd taunt me with it, wouldn't you? You'd place yourself where I could nearly reach you. And you'd say things to inflame me, but never touch me at all. I'd have to lie here helpless, watching you give yourself what you won't take from me." He sucked in a breath. "Start now, if you would.

The smallest grain of natural honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems.

Have you learned nothing from Kitty of how a married sister ought to behave? You must invite young ladies of your own choosing, and foist them upon me with adamance directly proportional to my lack of interest.

Honor is the best part of you, Will Blackshear. And I don't make that pronoucement lightly. No woman could, who's ever seen you naked.

Hope, and faith that your efforts will have been enough. And as much peace as you can muster with the possibility that they won't.

The Widow Russell apparently took her at-home retirement so far as the abstain from receiving guests in the formal parlors: Theo was shown to a pink-papered upstairs room where she sat in an armchair whose chintz upholstery featured roses twining daintily on a white ground. She was head-to-toe in black, of course, and for a moment he had the very odd impression of a spider lurking in a rose bouquet.

Don't you find that a terribly romantic idea? Love stealing in to overtake two people who'd believe they were merely friends?

Love makes us all do unaccountable things.

Some men there were who know how to look at a lady, and make her feel she'd been seen. Or perhaps there was no question of knowing how. Some men just looked at ladies that way. [ ... ] Tell me what absorbs you so, such a man might say. I wonder at your thoughts. He might even guess. It's to do with cards, isn't it?

Seven and a half." He breathed the words next to her ear.

Her eyes snapped open, all coffee-colored impatience. "You're supposed to go lower, to meet me. Six and a half, you should say."

"Eight," he murmured into her shoulder. "And I'll go lower, to meet you, any time you like." He flicked his tongue across her spine and caught the little shock that went charging up from her tailbone to the base of her skull. When he lifted his head to look in the mirror, her cheeks were red and her chin was down, all fierce attention leveled on his watch.

Eight minutes it was, then. He kissed her, and kissed and kissed and kissed her until he knew that narrow path of skin, and the knobbly scaffolding underneath, the way he knew the lines on his own palm. He knew her scent, and he knew her taste, and he knew which vertebra put a catch in her breath when he brushed it with his lips. He could learn her whole body by mouth, if she would but let him, and distract her all out of her mind.

She'd been lovely the first time he'd spied her, distant and disapproving in church. She was lovely each time he peeled away her clothing, and when she lay in his arms, and when her features went dim and unfocused as he lost himself. But she was never lovelier than when she spoke this way, all afire with the knowledge of wrongs to be righted and good to be done.

He shook his head, the corner of his mouth ticking up. "My way this time, remember? No ordering me about. I place an embargo on the word harder.