I have never said this to anyone before.” Leo’s voice was like ragged velvet. “But the idea of you with child is the most insanely arousing thing I’ve ever imagined. Your belly all swollen, your breasts heavy, the funny little way you would walk … I would worship you. I would take care of your every need. And everyone would know that I’d made you that way, that you belonged to me.

It's a mistake, you know. You have no idea what you'll be exposed to...the obscenities and lewd comments, the lecherous gazes, the groping and pinching...and that's just my house. Imagine what it would be like here.

Then he raised her enough to whisper in her ear, and while his voice was tender, his words were savage. "You're my woman, and no man or God or ghost will ever take you from me.

I loved him so much, loved his fearlessness, his strength, even the ambition that would someday take him away from me.

You know what it is you smell on him, Haven? Testosterone. It's leaking out of his pores.

She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn’t know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief.

That drew a mocking laugh from Lillian. “Really, someone should tell St. Vincent that he’s a living cliché. He has become the embodiment of everything they say about reformed rakes.