Tessa Dare Quotes

#1. Men never hesitated to declare their presence. They were permitted to live aloud, in reverberating thuds and clunks, while ladies were always schooled to abide in hushed whispers.

Tessa Dare

#2. Where shall we honeymoon? Will you take me to Italy, to see the Botticellis?"
"I will take you anywhere you wish. Anywhere under the sky.

Tessa Dare

#3. It's only wasted time if you don't learn from it.

Tessa Dare

#4. I need to know," he said. "I need to know, right now, if you're mine. I've been patient for years, and if need be, I can wait years more. I'll do anything in my power to win you, to keep you. But I need to know, this moment, if you'll be mine in the end.

Tessa Dare

#5. Katie." He groaned. "I burn for you."

Just a few husky words, but coming from a man so taciturn, she thought they must equal reams of poetry.

Tessa Dare

#6. Diana opened her eyes and steeled her resolve. Some days, she decided, freedom meant the wind in your hair and the sun on your face and lips swollen with forbidden kisses.
And other days, freedom meant killing an eel.

Tessa Dare

#7. Don't you dare," I manage breathily, when his gaze drops to my mouth. "I bite."
Damn him, he presses closer.
"Maybe tonight I fancy being bitten.

Tessa Bailey

#8. It seemed any young woman at odds with her place in life - be she a genteel lady or a serving girl - might find a happier home within the pages of a book.

Tessa Dare

#9. She rolled toward him, nestling close and throwing her arm over his chest. Her fingers toyed idly with the hair there, sifting

Tessa Dare

#10. I named all the nothings after you. Because, my darling Nora ... no matter where I traveled, you were always what was missing.

Tessa Dare

#11. He caught her pearl with his fingertips and worked her in tight, feverish circles until she shuddered and cried out with the exquisite pleasure. As her climax receded, he withdrew, finishing with a few hard, desperate thrusts between her thighs. As he came, she savored his low growl.

Tessa Dare

#12. He kissed her. Without warning, without permission. Without even deciding to do it, but simply because he couldn't have done anything else. He needed that breath she was holding. It belonged to him, and he wanted it back.

Tessa Dare

#13. [ ... ]
"oh, dear," said Tessa.
"I have that effect on women," Will said. "I probably should have warned you before you agreed to marry me."
"I can still change my mind," Tessa said sweetly.
"Don't you dare -," He began with a breathless half laugh, [ ... ]

Cassandra Clare

#14. Dodgy bastard," one of the twins spat. A trickle of blood from his temple made it hard to tell which one. "Shite for brains," the other replied, reversing their positions and landing a punch to the gut. "We're twins. If I'm a bastard, you're one too.

Tessa Dare

#15. I don't suppose there are eggs? If I do say it myself, I make a very good pancake." Oh, no. This just grew worse and worse. I make a very good pancake.

Tessa Dare

#16. What I'm saying isna romantic. It's raw, primal, and entirely crude." He lowered his voice to a growl. "You, Madeline Elise Gracechurch have been driving me slowly mad with lust. For years.

Tessa Dare

#17. Well," he breathed against her ear, "I happen to have a few depraved fantasies of my own."
The words hummed in her ear, sending electric jolts of arousal straight to her core. She whispered, "Tell me.

Tessa Dare

#18. You don't want to ruin the surprise." "If the surprise is a spike through the chest, I do.

Tessa Dare

#19. No, of course she didn't say it. But there is no other reason she should have called, except to pave the way for her brother. she had nothing whatsoever to talk about. Just sat there like a stick, sipping tea."
"I didn't know sticks could sip tea.

Tessa Dare

#20. You let him go? What the devil for?"
"Something's wrong with his eyesight." Any man who mistook Miss Turner for a dockside whore had to be losing his vision.

Tessa Dare

#21. Logan. Oh, Logan, that's so..." A moan caught her words and stole them away. "So lovely."
"You're lovely." He kissed her just where he knew she needed it. "Beautiful." Made a tender pass of his tongue. "Perfect.

Tessa Dare

#22. And even if she could discern what future she wanted ... How would she bear it if that future didn't want her?

Tessa Dare

#23. He shook his head, looking perplexed. "I even like it when you snipe at me." "You've seen me with a gun. If I were to snipe at you, I promise you'd feel it. And you wouldn't like it one bit

Tessa Dare

#24. Love me. Don't ever stop. You hear me? It won't be this good with anyone else. Only me, Min. Only me.

Tessa Dare

#25. I don't care who he is. He needs to disappear." Ransom turned and called out the window. "For the love of G-d man. I have England's sweetheart bent over the desk and panting for me. Go away and come back tomorrow.

Tessa Dare

#26. She smiled. "Oh, dear. All this and a sense of humor, too."
Apparently, no one had given him a compliment lately. He looked as if he'd been thrown a grenade. Or a wet kitten.

Tessa Dare

#27. What? You mean to travel almost five hundred miles alone? No. I can't let you do that. I ... I forbid you. It was Colin's first attempt at forbidding anyone to do anything, and it worked about as well as he'd expected it to. Which was to say, not at all.

Tessa Dare

#28. In fact, the possibility was so far out of the question, the possibility and the question were on separate continents.

Tessa Dare

#29. Any self-respecting rake had two kinds of women in his life: those he took to bed at night and those who made him a pancake in the morning. If he suddenly wanted both from the same woman, it was a warning flag. One big and red enough for even a blind man to see.

Tessa Dare

#30. He'd imprisoned himself in this castle to rot. He'd cut off all contact with the outside world. And just when he thought he'd burned all his bridges, this woman - this impossible, sweet, foolish woman - arrived, determined to swim the moat. Breach his defenses. Make a home. Stay.

Tessa Dare

#31. Listen to me. I admire you. Adore you. Hell, I've spent four years constructing some twisted, blasphemous religion around you.
-Luke

Tessa Dare

#32. I'm not a child," Eliza argued with the closed double doors. "I'm a grown woman. With accomplishments and bosoms and everything.

Tessa Dare

#33. She would allow him to comfort her. And perhaps, someday, she would listen patiently if a dark, dreary night found him well in his cups and he drunkenly confessed to still feeling scores of wounds that weren't his own, but those of men under his command.

Tessa Dare

#34. He'd never thought he would feel that way again. Ready to brave any sorrow just to keep her at his side. Perhaps the impulse wasn't logical or reasoned, but it was real and true. It was choosing hope rather than despair. Seizing the one sparkling possibility in a roomful of someones.

Tessa Dare

#35. You're not going to ruin my first kiss. I won't let you. You're going to kiss me again, right now. And make it better.

Tessa Dare

#36. I was twelve when my father's stories began appearing in the Gentleman's Review. But that was almost fourteen years ago. And, in the natural way of things, I've aged one year every year since.

Tessa Dare

#37. Outside of muttering his way through Sunday service, Aaron had not voiced a conscious prayer in more than ten years. He supposed it wouldn't help his chances in the hereafter if he returned to the fold with Saints preserve me from premature ejaculation. No matter how sincerely uttered.

Tessa Dare

#38. Though he would be struggling to keep his meal

Tessa Dare

#39. I want to have you in every way known to man, and then
invent a dozen more.

Tessa Dare

#40. I love you. I wish I had better ways to show it. All I have is this brash, reckless heart. But it's yours.

Tessa Dare

#41. Thorne looked to the woolly beast at his [Bram's] knee and and cocked a brow. "You seem to have acquired a lamb, my lord."
"The lamb goes home tomorrow."
"And if he doesn't?"
"He's dinner.

Tessa Dare

#42. What's the worst thing you've ever done?"
He pushed his hands through his hair. "I'm beginning to think it was marrying you.

Tessa Dare

#43. From the way they all gaped at her, one would think he'd announced something truly shocking. Something like, "Lucy is a spy for Napoleon," or "Lucy only has six months to live," or "Lucy has decided to take up the harp.

Tessa Dare

#44. Sweetness. That was the first surprise. He'd heard so many tart words from these lips . . . but her kiss was sweet. Cool and sweet, with a hint of true decadence beneath. Like a sun-ripened plum at the height of summer. Ready to fall into his hand at the slightest inducement.

Tessa Dare

#45. But when the sun goes down? We're all just stumbling through the darkness, trying to outlast another night.

Tessa Dare

#46. Look at me. Now look at yourselves. Now look back at me. I am the man you want to be like.

Tessa Dare

#47. I do," he said roughly. "My God, Cecily. I do love you." Joy

Tessa Dare

#48. You're like a gift," he said, his voice rough. "All wrapped up for someone else. A man can't look at you, but think of loosing those bows, one by one.

Tessa Dare

#49. For God's sake. Don't do that."
"Don't do what?"
"Smile."
"How do you know I'm smiling?"
"I can hear it. Hell, I can feel it. It's all warm and sweet and ... " He scowled. "Bah.

Tessa Dare

#50. You're so tight," he murmured, sounding concerned.
"I think it more that you're so big," she said.

Tessa Dare

#51. Given her choice of any three words to hear from Logan's lips, Maddie probably would have chosen I love you. But she had to admit, Lift your skirts had an undeniable appeal.

Tessa Dare

#52. The two men brushed shoulders in passing, in what Sophia assumed qualified as an acceptably masculine substitute for an embrace. How grateful she was to be female.

Tessa Dare

#53. And she was well-enough acquainted with loneliness to understand that the worst part wasn't having nobody caring for you - it was having nobody to care for.

Tessa Dare

#54. So there's an ... an etiquette to raking. Some seducer's code of honor. Is this what you're telling me?

Tessa Dare

#55. I'd have to be dead in my grave before I stopped fighting for you, Madeline. Even then, I'd move six feet of earth to find a way.
-Logan

Tessa Dare

#56. Look at him. The man's not delusional. He's in love.

Tessa Dare

#57. It started to rain. Fat, heavy drops of summer rain - the kind that always struck her as vaguely lewd and debauched. Little potbellied drunkards, those summer raindrops, chortling on their way to earth and crashing open with glee.

Tessa Dare

#58. Is it truly so unfathomable, that an imperfect girl might be perfectly loved?

Tessa Dare

#59. What have I done? Most lasses like it when a man kills the bugs. Along with reaching high places and giving sexual pleasure, it's one of the few universally popular qualities we have on offer."

-Logan

Tessa Dare

#60. You're being opportunistic."
"I won't deny it. Why don't you seize the opportunity, as well? I want to kiss you. And you need kissing, desperately.

Tessa Dare

#61. He held out his hands, palms up like a pair of scales with his options weighed on either side.
He lifted one hand. "A world of adventure." He lifted the other. "You.

Tessa Dare

#62. The most dangerous weapon is the one that strikes closest to the heart.

Tessa Dare

#63. She'd declined to attend parties and balls, citing her devotion to the Highland hero of her dreams - but really because she'd preferred to stay home with a book.

Tessa Dare

#64. You heard her the other night," Bruiser said. "She wants love. And devotion and compromise. Funny, isn't it, how women seem to want those things, when they're saying words like 'Till death do us part.

Tessa Dare

#65. You're a powerful man,' she went on. 'And it's not only to do with your money or your title. You have the ability to make people feel valued, when you're not making them feel like rubbish.

Tessa Dare

#66. I knew yours to be the more resilient spirit.

Tessa Dare

#67. You are a sweet man."
-"God, there it is." He flopped back on the bed, as if shot through the heart. "Repeat that to anyone, and I will have you brought up on charges of slander."
"I wouldn't dream of telling a soul.

Tessa Dare

#68. He lay on the bed, freshly shaven and washed, legs crossed at the ankles and arms propped behind his head. His posture said, Yes, ladies. I truly am this handsome. And I don't even have to try.

Tessa Dare

#69. Tiny spoons were incompatible with a state of sensual turmoil.

Tessa Dare

#70. I think you've more than made up for lost time now. In fact, I'm certain you've exceeded your teasing quota for the day." "I can't borrow against tomorrow's?"
"No.

Tessa Dare

#71. Devilish men should not be allowed to hold kittens, babies, or bouquets of wildflowers. There ought to be an Act of Parliament.

Tessa Dare

#72. It's so curious, isn't it? How if you're denied something again and again, eventually you start telling yourself you didn't want it in the first place.

Tessa Dare

#73. Ransom?" She struggled to sit up. "What are you do - ?"
He laid his tongue to her core.
"Oh." She flopped back against the bed. "Oh."
God, she was sweet. Sweet and pink and musky and Izzy.

Tessa Dare

#74. Dedication: For librarians and booksellers everywhere, who gather books and build shelters for tender souls.

Tessa Dare

#75. Your breasts are alabaster orbs.' "What?" Rufus objected. "That's stupid. I'm not saying that."
"Do you have some better suggestion?"
"Why can't you just say she's got a fair set of titties?

Tessa Dare

#76. He set Miss Goodnight back on her feet. As he lowered her to the floor, her body slid down his, like a raindrop easing down the surface of a rock.

Tessa Dare

#77. Cecy," he whispered against her ear, "tell me this is not a dream. Are you truly mine at last?" "Oh, Luke." She slid her arms about his waist and gripped him tight. "I always have been.

Tessa Dare

#78. Jesus. Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Delilah, Jezebel, Salome, Judith, Eve. Trouble, every last one. Add Minerva Highwood to the list.

Tessa Dare

#79. How precisely, had a arrived at this? He was taking orders from a spinster, willingly submitting himself to her medieval torture devices. And she wasn't even naked.
-Bram's thoughts

Tessa Dare

#80. She tasted of ambrosia. Like peaches and blossoms and honey and musk. And just a touch of salt, to make the unbearable sweetness even sweeter still.

Tessa Dare

#81. My dear imaginary Captain MacKenzie, you are not real and never will be. I, however, am a true and eternal fool.
Here, have a drawing of a snail.

Tessa Dare

#82. Oh no. Oh God. I couldn't possibly be so stupid."
"Don't limit yourself. You can be anything you wish.

Tessa Dare

#83. If you leave me, I will follow you. And I will find you. I've the fastest ship on the sea, and boundless determination. I don't lose what's mine." His eyes burned into hers. "I will find you.

Tessa Dare

#84. He took that mental image and filed it away under Pleasant-Sounding Impossibilities. Right between "flying carriage" and "beer fountain.

Tessa Dare

#85. Sometimes the devil you knew was easier to face than the devil who'd pressed you to a bedpost and rolled your nipple under his thumb.

Tessa Dare

#86. She couldn't help being a weasel. She was born that way.

Tessa Dare

#87. My God, what's happened?" He crossed to her at once and knelt at her side. "What is it? Tell me."
"It's ruined," she cried.
"What's ruined?"
"Everything. Your meal. My life. Our chances." She hiccupped. "The eel.

Tessa Dare

#88. There were a dozen reasons why she might refuse him. But they were all someone else's reasons. Her mother's, her peers', society's. She'd already left all those expectations behind.

Tessa Dare

#89. Her fingertips rested on his cheek, like a constellation of unexpected kindness.

Tessa Dare

#90. It's like this," he repeated in a low voice, just for her. "I'm not that sort of man. I don't wait for the things I want.

Tessa Dare

#91. She passed through the door, walked down a dim corridor, and emerged into a soaring, empty space. What she found made her blood turn cold. Oh, muscadine.

Tessa Dare

#92. And bloody hell. This journeyed far beyond "like," rocketed straight past "fondness," and pushed all the way to the brink of absurdity.

Tessa Dare

#93. I'm so sorry we'll never meet," she whispered, laying her posy atop the late Lord and Lady Payne's grave. "But thank you. For him. I promise, I'll love him as fiercely as I can. Kindly send down some blessings when you can spare them. We'll probably need them, from time to time.

Tessa Dare

#94. I'd be more than happy to let you survey my physical perfection in its entirety. But only if I get to see you, too." To her shocked silence, he replied, "It's only fair. Tit for tat."

"How is that fair? You've seen countless tits.

Tessa Dare

#95. Izzy was utterly convinced. Never mind Arabian horses, African cheetahs. No creature in the world could bolt so quickly as a rake confronted with the word "marriage". They ought to shout it out at footraces rather than using starting pistols.
Ready, steady ... matrimony!

Tessa Dare

#96. He wanted to possess her mouth, her body, her mind and heart. To touch every deep, soft and secret part of her: the tender arch of her palate, the vulnerable curve beneath each breast, the snug corner of her heart where his memory lived.

-Luke's thoughts

Tessa Dare

#97. Drat. I'm not sure anyone even noticed the kiss."
"I noticed it." He rubbed his mouth with the side of his hand. The taste of ripe plums still lingered on his lips. He found himself unaccountably thirsty.

Tessa Dare

#98. Clearly the sight of a well-muscled forearm incited a woman to utter depravity. How else to explain the invention of cuffs?

Tessa Dare

#99. Is that a nautilus?" he asked. "Close, but no. It's an ammonite." "An ammonite? What's an ammonite? Sounds like an Old Testament people overdue for smiting." "Ammonites are not a biblical people," she replied in a tone of strained forbearance. "But they have been smited." "Smote

Tessa Dare

#100. Just because they're family doesn't mean they won't hurt you. It means they know how to cut deep.

Tessa Dare