Teresa Denys Quotes

I did not dare look back at Domenico. Sprawled catlike in the silver chair, he was watching me; I could feel his eyes resting on my bare shoulders as actual as a touch.

He held his hand out to me without speaking; and it was then, as I went to him like a falcon flying to his fist, that I realized I loved him.

Those fierce animal passions of his were his masters, not his slaves, and he was as much their victim as those he punished when he was in their grip. And despite what he had done to me tonight, I knew that his desire was real. Even if all his need was for a living body and arms to hold him, it was still a bitter desperate need.

She stared at him breathlessly, seething. It was like hurling herself against a wall of granite, she thought disjointedly; fighting against him hurt her. But if she yielded to the unreasoned impulse of her love at this moment and flung herself into his arms in contrite tears, she would never come so close again to the citadel in his soul that he let no one approach unscathed.

I forbid you to go."

"I am not yours to forbid. Comfort your pride with your conquest!"

"Felicia!"

The raw anguish of it stopped me. Tears were threatening to spill from my eyes so that I had to bend my head, fighting for self-control, and I did not hear him come up beside me. His hand touched my shoulder, then dropped again as I shivered.

"Does this look like pride?" His voice was shaking. "Or must I grovel?"

He was on his knees at my feet, and as I watched he lifted the hem of my gown to his lips and kissed it. I made some sort of sound in my throat, but I could not speak.

"You cannot go." He spoke in a whisper, without lifting his head. "I love you. I have always loved you--I bought you from your vile brother because I could not live without you."

As I stared down at his bowed, bright head, the earth shook under my feet. This could not be happening, I thought.

I will not have you hazard your life, Felicia. It is too precious to me."

"And is yours less so to me? Domenico, whether you live or die, let me share it!

Now I had new fears; not of him but of myself and of the drugging rule my body could exert over my mind.
...I was lost to hungers I had not known I possessed.

The duke nodded, his beautiful face full of catlike satisfaction. "But since then I have conquered a sterner fortress." His eyes mocked me. "And now I enter it freely.

I tell him of damnation, but I doubt he fears anything but the darkness in his own mind.

A great ruff brushed his firm jaw; his supple prowl had become a conscious elegance, as though he had put on majesty as a whore puts on paint, as a mask and as a weapon.