No, Susanna, " he said. "I cannot love you just a little. If that's what you want, you must find a different man." His green eyes were breathtaking in their intensity. His thumb brushed her bottom lip. "Because I can only love you entirely. With everything I am, and everything I ever will be. Body, mind, heart, soul.
Tessa DareI was afraid. Of getting hurt in other ways. To be truthful, I still am." His thumb stroked her cheek. "I would never hurt you." "I don't think you can promise me that." She squeezed his bruised fingers. "But it makes things a bit more equal, to know that I can hurt you, too." His gaze fell to her lips. He said simply, without any trace of irony, "You are killing me.
Tessa DareShe would allow him to comfort her. And perhaps, someday, she would listen patiently if a dark, dreary night found him well in his cups and he drunkenly confessed to still feeling scores of wounds that werenโt his own, but those of men under his command.
Tessa DareBefore I found Minerva, I'd passed nights with more than my share of women." Thorne groaned. Don't. Just don't. "I've passed time with duchesses and farm girls, and it doesn't matter whether their skirts are silk or homespun. Once you get them bare--" Thorne drew up short. "If you start in on rivers of silk and alabaster orbs, I will have to hit you.
Tessa DareI'm not going to accept your challenge. There will be no duel." "Why not? Because I'm a woman?" "No, because I've seen the way you spinsters handle a pistol. You'd shoot me dead where I stood.
Tessa DareHe quietly groaned. Again and again, heโd witnessed this phenomenon with his friends. They got married. They were happy in that sated, grateful way of infrequently pleasured men with a now-steady source of coitus. Then they went about crowing as if theyโd invented the institution of matrimony and stood to earn a profit for every bachelor they could convert.
Tessa Dare