Power Play Quotes

“I’m not like he is, you know,” he tells me, but that isn’t the part that stirs my cold, dead heart. It’s the words he follows it up with a second later, as though it barely takes him anything to let them out: “So if you want to run, run. I won’t sit on the side-lines and wait for you to slip away, like you never existed.” He pauses, thickly. Takes a second, in a way I can understand. “I’ll fight for you, El. I’ll always fight for you.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“It’s the only thing I never understood about him,that he had you … he had you right in the palm of his hand. And yet somehow he didn’t want to spend every second of every day touching you all over. He didn’t want to make love to you.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“Am I … not what you were expecting?”

Of course, my immediate instinct is to say no. No, you’re not what I was expecting. You’re so heavy and solid and masculine that I just want to climb you like a tree, and maybe live on your face for a couple of decades.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“I know,” he says, and it’s the strangest thing. I can tell he’s smiling, slow and syrupy, when he says it.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“I’m not like he is, you know,’ he tells me, but that isn’t the part that stirs my cold, dead heart. It’s the words he follows it up with a second later, as though it barely takes him anything to let them out: ‘So if you want to run, run. I won’t sit on the side-lines and wait for you to slip away, like you never existed.’ He pauses, thickly. Takes a second, in a way I can understand. ‘I’ll fight for you, El. I’ll always fight for you.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“It’s not even a comfort when he’s kind about it either, because in a way I don’t want him to be. I want him to tell me that I’m no good, and that maybe I should get out of the car and walk in the rain like the tragic heroine of some melodramatic novel.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“When I hold him for just a second, like this, and feel how soft his skin is. How furry he is in front, and so big too. It’s sort of like hugging a really lovely bear, only without the word in there that I’m absolutely not doing. I’m not hugging him, all right?”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“And if all of that makes me want to do something very stupid, like stroke his hair and pet him softly, well. We just won’t go into that.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“But somehow, the way he looks doesn’t quite compute in the manner it should. Instead, it just makes me realise something: I’ve never met a man as handsome as him who behaves the way he does. Who wears all of his expressions on his sleeve and puts a hand up his own cardigan and doesn’t seem aware that he’s utterly, utterly lovely.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“His mouth is strange. It’s like it has no corners or definition around it, no real shape to keep it in place. Of course, occasionally when he talks it’s given a proper outline, but then, it’s not really the outline I want it to have. Movement just makes those lips plumper, more obviously sensuous, and then when he stops talking all I can see is how smooth and soft that mouth is. If he didn’t have that heavy jaw and all of that overflowing size, he’d look like a cute cartoon character, and nobody wants that. They want men with intense, cold, manly gazes. Not that warm, soft-focus eagerness. Not those sooty lashes that probably look beautiful spread over his cheeks – when he closes his eyes in ecstasy, maybe.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“He nods, eagerly. I wish to God I didn’t have to add that ‘eagerly’ onto that description.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play

“Dear Benjamin,

“You should know that I’m not sorry either. I’m not sorry that I want to do these things with you. I’m not sorry that I want you so much I can’t think of anything but you. But most of all, I’m not sorry that I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I pause and listen to the low scratch of a pencil on paper as it carries all of my feelings to him, my one.

Before I finish, to the heavenly sound of him sighing with pleasure.

“Yours always, Eleanor.”
― Charlotte Stein, Power Play