Guilty Pleasures

How much time do I get in exchange for that rose?”

Because she did not like him. But she had liked him well enough when he’d held her in his arms. She had liked him well enough to kiss him and enjoy it as much as he had.

He gave her a wry smile. “Why is it that when I am with you, Miss Wade, I can never feel myself to be quite as arrogant a fellow as you have declared me to be? Quite the opposite, in fact, for with you I often feel the humbling effects of having been put in my place.”

“To a man, a woman’s hair is never trivial. Imagining a woman with her hair down, imagining how it looks loose around her shoulders, how it feels in his hands or spread across his pillows, can become a man’s obsession.” He paused to look at her, curling a loose tendril of hair at her ear around his finger, his knuckles brushing her cheek. “I know it has been mine on occasion.”

“It means, ‘I would not have you otherwise.’”

She felt free.

And ruin’d love, when it is built anew, grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

William Shakespeare

“Never fear, for it is quite the opposite.” He took the spray of flowers from her hand, and Daphne caught her breath as he reached behind her head and tucked the tiny bouquet into the bun at the nape of her neck.

I was simply curious.”
She did not seem to believe him, but she shrugged as if it did not matter and continued, “Caesar knew making Cleopatra his queen would not be a popular decision, but he had planned to do it anyway because he wanted her so much.