If I never have anything from him except this one moment I am going to take it. Take it now, or drown in regret later.

Some questions change everything.

Women beg me for it, and not the other way around." "Then you should go to one of them." "Oh, I will. When we return to London, I'm going to embark on a spree of orgiastic debauchery that won't end until someone is arrested for it. But in the meanwhile...do you truly expect that the two of us are going to share a bed tonight-and tomorrow night-as chastely as a pair of nuns on holiday?

I didn't know how to stop wanting him. It wasn't that I had any hope—I knew I'd never see him again. But that didn't stop me from comparing every other man to Hardy and finding them all lacking. I had exhausted myself loving him.

I am running after you, and life, in desperate pursuit. My dream is that someday you will both turn and let me catch you. That dream carries me through every night... I have enclosed a hundred kisses in this letter. You must count them out carefully and not lose any.

Bitterly I wondered if Hardy was going to overshadow every relationship for the rest of my life, haunting me like a ghost. I didn't know how to let him go. I'd never even had him.

She had never experienced the pain of unsatisfied desire before. It hurt. It hurt like nothing she'd ever felt, and there seemed to be no remedy