Lauren Gilley Quotes

Fillette." He twisted his upper body toward her, so he could put both arms around her, press her back against the pillows and blot out the lamplight with his shoulder. "I only ever want to love you because it's you, and it's me, and I can't help myself." He whispered against her neck in French and she felt herself melting.

The South did not bustle and plow and struggle against the snow; it slept beneath it, the silence broken only by the chatter of hungry birds and the exuberant shouts of children using trash can lids as makeshift sleds.

Tango tipped his head back against the bench, staring up at the denim-colored evening sky. This was the most dangerous, the most wonderful, the most daring addiction of all: life.

How many times have you been slapped on dates?"
"Five," he said as he checked over his shoulder and eased back out into traffic. "So hit my left side if you're going to. The right's my pretty side."
"Which side is your modest side?"
"Don't have one.

She'd put her teeth in his heart, long ago, and he'd left the print there, evidence that he wanted her love. That he returned it.

I'm your last choice," she said. "You tried everything, tasted everyone in Knoxville. And when the princess told you off, you came to me, the last ditch effort.

Well aren't you just a ray of fucking sunshine.

I love you, he thought. And then left her.

She was this lovely little girl setting his world on fire.

No. Those memories would not serve him here. Only the fury. That metallic, constant anger that knew neither emotion nor restraint. Emotionless, like the gators he'd grown up hunting, the black tide inside himself would rise to the occasion and like a puppeteer, he would take total control of the wicked things his hands would do.

A little fear's healthy. The day we stop being afraid is probably the day we stop being human.

She took a deep breath and it was her eighteenth birthday; it was Jess's wedding and a summer evening at the pool; it was all those hundreds of times he'd been propped against her dorm building. And it was now, and she wanted to be this sophisticated, Audrey Hepburn-esque girl who gave him a coy smile and sauntered toward him, hips swinging. But this was Tam, and she wasn't sophisticated for crap.

Do we have to have one of those woman conversations about it?" She felt her brows go up. "I'm sorry, what's that supposed to mean?" "Oh shit. We do." "Michael.

Ava wasn't the poor unsuspecting woman who'd let the wild thing into the house, she was the wild thing's mate, creeping indoors at his side ...

Maybe 'normal' isn't what you should be trying for. You're too brave for normal.

You can't love anything properly from a distance.

Beautiful' isn't a feminine word. I don't even think it's a human word. It isn't what something looks like; it's what something is.

Ah, sweetheart, she's not the one I want to bend back over my bike right now. Jesus ... Christ.

she was, whichever city or state, whatever mood she was in, there was nothing like a book store to fill her up with happiness.

Well, Mercy was a talker, friendly in his fury, and something about that strategy always got him results. That, or it was just because he was fucking huge and liked to use an ice pick. Either

Never before had he said such long strings of sentences in French before, like he did now. In the sheltering dark, his thrusts were slow, deep, sure, his hands digging bruises into her hips, the French rolling in thick purrs off his tongue; she had the impression it was sexual, whatever he said, the way the words caressed and encouraged her.

He was silent, and she finally gave him her full attention. "You're creepy, you know?"
A small grin plucked at one corner of his mouth. "I thought you liked strong silent types these days."
"There's silent, and then there's you.

Nights like this," someone had told him, not so long ago, "feel like the world's waiting for something." He was sure, in hindsight, that on that night on a back step with a shared bottle of grocery store Pinot Noir, the girl beside him had wanted the two of them to be that something special.

I wanted to be special to you."
"Fillette, you were always that.

Mercy was his ice breaker, his Jolly Cajun Giant, who could get away with saying whatever he damned wanted because no one wanted to climb up on a stepladder and stop him.

His voice was friendly enough, but his gaze drilled into Mercy, an obvious challenge. Cute, Mercy thought. Not impressed, asshole.

She didn't understand love, not the golden, shimmering, romance-novel stuff that existed between mates. She was skeptical of it, and had never been one to pretend that it existed just for the sake of excitement. She didn't know what it looked like, what it felt like…at least, she hadn't. But she realized, amid the dancing tendrils of ivy that climbed the gazebo, that love – that good, golden kind she'd always discounted – didn't arrive with a blast of trumpets and an earth-shattering epiphany. It was earned, formed, created, day by day, a little at a time. And it looked like Mike eating toast over her kitchen sink, felt like his hand smoothing her hair back off her face, sounded like his sudden shout of laughter when she spilled a whole sack of flour out of the top cabinet down onto her head in his kitchen, tasted like the kiss he used to make up for it.

Mercy grinned. Do I smell a shotgun wedding? I've wanted to call you Daddy for so long now.

Stupid's good. We can work with stupid.

He smelled like bikes. Like a mechanic. She loved that smell.

Tango, ever the gentleman, gave her a wink. I don't have anything in my blood but beer and poor white trash. Figure I gotta get in good with these leader types.

And God, the filthy things he'd murmured in her ear. It was just as he'd promised: heavy, and dirty, and sweaty, and yes, fun. He hadn't allowed her to be self-conscious or shy. He'd guided her hand to his hard cock and said, "That right there is because you're beautiful." Softly, right against her throat, almost sweetly: "Get outta your own way and tell me what you want." She

I was afraid," she said, "and I wanted to hear your voice.

She didn't know if she cried for what she'd lost as a teenager, or for the confused tangle of emotions inside her now. Either way, Mike telling her that he was sorry against the top of her head was the only answer that made any sense.

You can add new parts, baby," she imagined Maggie saying. "But you can't lose the parts of you that were already there.

Billingsly castle was holding its breath. Thunderheads rolled in from the hills, thick and white and folding over like biscuit dough, bubbling, boiling magenta along the edges where the skillet was the hottest.

There was no denying it; he was staring right at her, and the exuberance in his face, shining in his eyes, caused her throat to tighten. No, she thought quietly. Please don't direct anything like that my way. I won't be able to defend against it.

His voice was different in the small, intimate spaces that existed when they were pressed together like this; it was sweet with a familiar sort of sleepiness, a voice just for her that the rest of the world didn't get to hear.

You're suppressing my first amendment rights," she said, voice muffled. "You don't live in America; you live in the United States of Teague.

Strong men need strong love, and a soft touch. Once you fall in love with a man like that, there's no going back to ordinary.

They'd dueled in the lamplight of her kitchen that night, savaging each other with accusations that could never be recalled. Now, he couldn't remember half of what they'd said, only the colors and lights and seething tide of fear all around them. He could still taste the acrid burn of unfairness.

Mercy felt a wide, humorless spread across his face. She's my conscience. My soul. The only part of me that hasn't gone all the way dark. No one fucks with her and gets out alive.

For a wondrous golden second, they basked in the afterglow, not caring that it was four in the afternoon and they were naked in front of the windows. "I missed you," Ellie whispered right against his ear. "Don't ever think that I wasn't missing you like crazy all that time.

The world is full of terrible things. But there are beautiful things, too, and you're one of them.

He felt her heartbeat against his shoulder, through his jacket, light as raindrops.