Wendy, Lady Evelyn Quince

“Nostalgia is much more than a defense against negative feelings. Nostalgia puts us on the offense. When we experience nostalgia, we aren’t running to the past for protection. We are pulling the past to the present to help us plan the future.”
― Clay Routledge, Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life

“We ate slowly, looking at each other the whole while, silent, anticipating, savoring the sensations building, mounting inside. Utterly enthralled I watched him eat chicken, his strong white teeth tearing the flesh apart, and it was thrilling, tantalizing. I observed the way his neck muscles worked when he swallowed his wine, and that was thrilling, too and I watched with fascination as his large brown hand reached out, fingers wrapping around a fuzzy golden-pink peach, clutching it. He took up a knife and carefully peeled the peach and divided it into sections and ate them one by one, his brown eyes devouring me as he did so. The tip of his tongue slipped out and slowly licked the peach juice from his lips…”
― Jennifer Wilde, Angel in Scarlet

“Because seeing you open up again is like seeing a garden in the snow."

He kissed her ear again. "When I moved here, I asked Lilka to design me something. She's the artistic one. She said, 'I love Chicago, but I hate the winter. I miss the flowers. That's what Pd love to see — flowers in the snow— like a miracle.' So that's what we did. And every year she'd tell me, 'Listen, Ty, you're cynical, but miracles do happen.' She's right. They do. And you're my miracle.”
― Bethany Campbell, Snow Garden

“When I heard you were almost surely dead, that’s when I knew what you were to me. My woman. You rode back to me from the dead. I’ll never let you go again.”

Weak and spent, I said desperately, as if I were shouting at him in a foreign language, “You don’t love me or you’d care what I feel!”

“I do care. In a year you’ll love me.”

Even at that moment, when I hated him, my blood quickened as he smiled. I cried defiance as much to my treacherous body as to him. “I won’t. I’ll hate you more than I do know. “

“We’ll see.” He cupped my chin and raised my face. “You’re tired darling. Sleep now. You can give me your answer in the morning.”

I couldn’t let him kill Trace. But to submit to those muscular, golden-haired arms? Let him do the things Trace had? And it wouldn’t be for one time only, I was sure of that. Court might after a season let me go, but I had a frightening dread that if he possessed me long enough, he would drain me till I became his thing, his creature—that I wouldn’t go, even if he allowed it and Trace would take me.”
― Jeanne Williams, A Lady Bought with Rifles