“He Held My Heart, Rather Than My Hand.”

“The sight of Julia’s sudden and intense arousal hit him sharply, not just in his own heightened state of excitement, but emotionally as well. She’d never looked at him this way before, all anxious and animated, as if no one had ever touched her before.

Gabriel rumbled slightly in his chest at the thought. He motioned to her with his eyes to come in for a kiss, and he melded his lips to hers, caressing her breasts more forcefully and trailing a thumb against the nubs that began to poke through her shirt. Julia gasped in pleasure into his mouth, and that spurred him on further. Soon he was groaning against her lips and pressing their bodies more tightly together.

More! his body ordered him. Closer. Faster. Tighter. More. More. More.”

Gabriel’s Inferno by Sylvain Reynard

“It was always you, Gabriel.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently, as if his soul was begging to be joined to hers.“It was always you, Julianne. Only you.”

“I know you’re scared of me, and I know it’s my fault… I did horrible things to you all on my own. I hate that I never did anything to get you to love me. You’ll never love me.

You make me shake. My hands shook with you today and I don’t understand what it is or why it’s happening. I just feel it. I never want you to walk too far away from me.

You scare me. I scare you. Don’t let me hurt you anymore.”

Credence by Penelope Douglas

“I’m —”

I lean in then and smell the triangle of his throat, cutting him off.

It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do ever since I saw that patch of skin in his office a few days ago.

And now that he’s here, I couldn’t stop myself from giving in and I was right.

I was so fucking right.

His scent is thicker here.

Thicker and headier and I have to open my mouth to take it in.

Leather and cigar smoke.

With a hint of cherries.

That’s new though and I wonder if I can lick it too. I wonder if I could take a bite out of it, his throat. Just to see if it tastes the same as it smells.”

Hey, Mister Marshall by Saffron A. Kent

“To the girls who never noticed Prince Charming…

…because the monster under their bed did that thing they liked with his tongue…”

Manik by Amo Jones

Giulio Berruti in Gabriel’s Inferno - Part 2 (2020)

“I lift my hands to the doorframe above her head and I smile down at her. “Fucking beautiful,” I whisper.

She smiles and then ducks her head. “I feel stupid.”

“I barely know you, so I’m not about to argue with you over your level of intelligence, because you could very well be as dumb as a rock. But at least you’re pretty.”

She laughs and focuses on my eyes for a beat, but then her focus falls to my mouth and God, I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her so bad it hurts and now I can’t smile anymore because I’m in too much pain.

“What’s wrong?”

I grimace and grip the doorframe tighter. “I want to kiss you really, really bad and I’m doing everything in my power not to do that yet.”

November 9 by Colleen Hoover

“And when something hurts, it means that you can feel. It means that your heart is not dead. That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? Because a heart never dies. You stomp on it; you stab it with a knife; pour gasoline on it and set it on fire; you ignore it and bury it in the pursuit of perfection. You do whatever the fuck you want to it, Arrow, but it doesn’t die. It beats and beats and feels. It feels all the things, good or bad, like this crazy little maniac that doesn’t know how to quit.”

My Darling Arrow by Saffron A. Kent

Details: The Dying Gladiator, 1799, by Pierre Julien.