Do you know what a balance wheel is?” She shook her head slightly. “There’s one in every clock or watch. It rotates back and forth without stopping. It’s what makes the ticking sound...what makes the hands move forward to mark the minutes. Without it, the watch wouldn’t work. You’re my balance wheel, Poppy.” -Harry Rutledge

A butterfly symbolized acceptance of each new phase in life. To keep faith as everything around you changed.

You're surrounded by it wherever you go, you walk through it, breathe it...it's in your lungs and under your tongue and between your fingers and toes.

It was a confirmation of a connection that already existed. And it was a bond that extended far beyond the borders of a shared living space. We would have stayed together even without a marriage certificate . . . but I believed in the permanence it represented. It was a piece of paper you could build a life on.

I stand by my opinions when I know I'm right, Captain Phelan. Whereas you stand by yours merely because you're stubborn.

I've missed you, Sebastian." "Have you, love?" He unfastened the buttons of her robe, the light eyes glittering with heat as her skin was revealed. "What part did you miss the most?" "Your mind," she said, and smiled at his expression. "I was hoping for a far more depraved answer than that." "Your mind is depraved," she told him solemnly. He gave a husky laugh. "True.

He looked like a fallen angel, replete with all the dangerous male beauty that Lucifer could devise.