I want you any way I can get you. Not because you’re beautiful or clever or kind or adorable, although devil knows you’re all those things. I want you because there’s no one else like you, and I don’t ever want to start a day without seeing you.

I have so much love for you, I could fill rooms with it. Buildings. 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...” His mouth moved passionately over hers, urging her lips apart. It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis. Or at least that was how Poppy felt about it.

A book had always been a door to another world... a world much more interesting and fantastical than reality. But she had finally discovered that life could be even more wonderful than fantasy.And that love could fill the real world with magic.

...one can't avoid the storms and calamities of life, but one can at least find the right partner to face them with.

What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?""I would think an infamous rake would already know.""I was never infamous. In fact, I'm fairly standard as far as rakes go.""The ones who deny it are the worst.

It's a sin.""How do you know?""Because it feels like one," she managed to say.He laughed quietly and pulled her hips farther toward him with a decisiveness that drew a little yelp from her. "In that case...I never sin by half measures.

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