“Grams waved off his annoyed tones. Oh, hush, you old fart. Let kids be kids. I remember a certain boy who used to kiss me like that too. Who was it? Big Paw sneered. I ll kick his ass.”
“I kiss her with everything I have. Like I ll never kiss her again. Because this is real, we finally made it to this place, and it s better than any fairy tale. Because I m done letting people stop me. Because here, always, we deserve this good thing.”
“You can t kiss me and vanish.”
“Through the chink in the hedge,’ said Susan, ‘I saw her kiss him. I raised my head from my flower-pot and looked through a chink in the hedge. I saw her kiss him. I saw them, Jinny and Louis, kissing. Now I will wrap my agony inside my pocket-handkerchief. It shall be screwed tight into a ball. I will go to the beech wood alone, before lessons. I will not sit at a table, doing sums. I will not sit next Jinny and next Louis. I will take my anguish and lay it upon the roots under the beech trees. I will examine it and take it between my fingers. They will not find me. I shall eat nuts and peer for eggs through the brambles and my hair will be matted, and I shall sleep under hedges and drink water from ditches and die there.”
“River s kiss tasted like coffee and storms and secrets.”
“He put his mouth by her ear. “Easy, now, Senna.” His thumb stroked her jaw as if he were gentling a wild thing. His sculpted body was hot behind hers. “Be easy “Stop touching me,” she pleaded in a whisper. His thumb stopped moving. “What?” “Kiss me.” The rest of him went completely still... “What did ye say?” he asked in a low, masculine rumble… Her heart started a strange thudding. Their voices were so quiet that the breeze blowing over them nearly drowned them out. Both were held paralyzed by the riders on the highway below. No one was going anywhere. In fact, it might all be over in a matter of minutes. And all she wanted was his touch. If I am going to die, she suddenly decided, it will not be absent the touch of this Irishman.She touched his hand and slid it across the mere inch back to her lips. Shutting her eyes, she trailed the tip of her tongue over his warm flesh.His body rippled slightly, like wind over waves. She felt every muscle in his body shift, very minutely, very definitely. He brushed his thumb once over her parted lips. Her breath shuddered out. “Did ye tell me to kiss ye, Senna?” “I did.” Her whisper trembled. “Why?” “Because,” she whispered, “if I’m going to die, it will not be lacking all the things I am lacking at present.” A pause. “Ye’re lacking a kiss, then?” She nodded.”
“She had read a story like this once, about a girl who was carried away by a monstrous bird to Mount Arzur. But the bird was enchanted, and when the girl kissed him, he turned into a handsome young man. It was fitting, Soraya supposed, that she would kiss a handsome young man and turn him into a monster.”
“For since a kiss is a knitting together both of body and soul, it is to be feared lest the sensual lover will be more inclined to the part of the body than of the soul; but the reasonable lover wotteth well that although the mouth be a parcel of the body, yet is it an issue for the words that be the interpreters of the soul, and for the inward breath, which is also called soul; and therefore hath a delight to join his mouth with the woman’s beloved with a kiss – not to stir him to any unhonest desire, but because he feeleth that that bond is the opening of an entry to the souls, which drawn with a coveting the one of the other, pour themselves by turn the one into the other’s body, and be so mingled together that each of them hath two souls, and one alone so framed of them both ruleth, in a manner, two bodies. Whereupon a kiss may be said to be rather a coupling together of the soul than of the body, because it hath such force in her that it draweth her unto it, and, as it were, separateth her from the body. For this do all chaste lovers covet a kiss as a coupling of souls together.”
“A kiss can change everything”
“It was easy to kiss someone when it didn’t matter; it was more difficult when it might be meaningful.”
“A book should grab you by the lapels and kiss you into tomorrow.”
“And then he came in for the kiss. It was him and I was so used to him, but in a totally different way. A new way. Changing everything and realizing that nothing really had to change. He was already mine. His kiss was just ours. So different than the accidental kiss when we were kids. His lips tasted good. Slow and gentle, but my heart was racing fast. He stopped and checked my eyes. I nodded slightly. I was good. This was good.”
“He s absolutely sure that guys who kissed the Prince of England and liked it don t get elected to represent Texas.”
“It’s like you can touch their soul when you kiss them the right way. Like their body and your body don’t matter so much anymore and it’s just heat and lips and… and magic.”
“Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song. I kiss you and the world begins to fade.”
“I am (going to miss), she squeaks out. Everything about him, The way he gets so excited about little things, like a latte or a line in a book. The way he kisses me, and the way his eyes take ten minutes to open if he wakes up too early. How he warms my feet in bed and looks at me when we re talking, like his eyes are soaking up everything I m saying as much as his ears are. Julie pauses to catch her breath. And you know what I m going to miss most of all? His face. I m going to miss looking at his beautiful face. It s my favorite face in the entire world.”
“She shied away from the gazes of boys and girls, bound her hair in brambles, braceleted her arms in vines, filled her mouth with chestnut honey to say away, keep away; I have forgotten how to kiss, how to be kissed, and do not want to remember.”