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“I suppose we all tend to want the impossible. And sometimes in attempting it we achieve something near enough to the impossible to elicit satisfaction.”
He didn’t dislike kittens. But life was too short to continue this conversation.
“A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should . . . touch places in you that you didn’t know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild. It should . . . hold a moment, I want to explain this as clearly as possible . . .” He tipped his head back and paused to consider, as though he were envisioning this and wanted to relate every detail correctly. “It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it’s very nearly pain.”
“It should make you do battle for control of your senses and your will. It should make you want to do things you’d never dreamed you’d want to do, and in that moment all of those things will make perfect sense. And it should herald, or at least promise, the most intense physical pleasure you’ve ever known, regardless of whether that promise is ever, ever fulfilled. It should, in fact . . .” he paused for effect “. . . haunt you for the rest of your life.”
“Very clever people often assume no one else is as clever as they are. Which isn’t very clever of them, when you think about it.”
“What did you plan to do, seduce and abandon me? ‘Ha-ha, I showed you, Ian Eversea, I despoiled your sister because you despoiled my fiancée’?”
When one is satisfied with how the world appears, there is no need to look any deeper or farther. Peeking below the surface of things, one often discovers things one would rather not see, whether it is worms tilled up by the plow or wads of dust beneath a bed.
My esteemed Venus— These reminded me of you. In my dreams, your lips are just this soft. —Your devoted servant, Mars
He knew precisely what she meant: Did that kiss nearly destroy the memory of all other kisses, and become the benchmark against which all future kisses would be measured? Did it live up to his pompous, purple rhetoric, designed to inflame her dreams and get her bosom heaving and to remind her how very little she knew of kissing?
He composed himself inwardly. Sparing the world his awkwardness, hiding vulnerability. Preserving his pride.
He lifted his head up a bit to look at her. “Oh. That’s all. Just ‘Genevieve.’ I just think from now on I’ll use your name as an exclamation of extreme satisfaction. When things are going very well I’ll shout ‘Genevieve!’ In lieu of hallelujah. Or if someone says, ‘Finally we should have fine weather after days of rain,’ I’ll say, ‘Well, Genevieve!’ ”
He would ask nothing else from life if he would be allowed to protect and cherish her for the rest of his.
Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life. George Gordon, Lord Byron,
Because poetry was a barrier against raw emotions. It distilled them into bearable music, allowed one to accommodate them a little at a time.
