First Met Quotes

“Encounter w/ strange man June 3, approx. 2 a.m. White, 5'9", slightly scruffy, shaggy brown hair. Ripped T-shirt, jeans, no shoes. Origin and destination unknown, believed to be night wanderer.


I chewed on the end of the pen, wondering if I should include any other details. It had been too dark to tell what color his eyes were. His voice had been deep, with a rasp, almost... but I couldn't write that. If my body was found in the woods behind the house, and investigators were competent enough to do a forensic analysis of this notebook, I didn't want editorializing words complicating the narrative. Words like compelling, or god forbid, sexy.”
― Alicia Thompson, Love in the Time of Serial Killers

“I was thinning the hellebore when I saw a woman in an oversize suit jacket and a fedora trying to throw a rope into a window two stories high to rescue her friend in the dark and rain. I've traveled all over the world and I've seen many things, but I've never seen anything like that. And then the alarm went off and she didn't run. She didn't give up. She refused to leave her friend and tried to scale a sheer brick wall with her bare hands. I didn't know love and loyalty like that existed. I only knew what it meant to be alone. I had to meet her."
"We didn't meet," I said. "You grabbed me and dragged me into the bushes."
"That's what you do when you find the love of your life," he said.
"You love me?"
His voice was soft as he turned away. "I think I loved you from the moment you threw that rope.”
― Sara Desai, To Have and to Heist

“There was a tap at the door, and it opened. His lips parted to snarl at the visitor.
"May I come in?" he heard a girl ask softly.
The curse died on Kev's lips. His senses were overwhelmed. He closed his eyes, breathing, waiting.
It's you. You're here.
At last.
"You've been alone for so long," she said, approaching him, "I thought you might want some company. I'm Winnifred."
Kev drew in the scent and sound of her, his heart pounding. Carefully he eased to his back, ignoring the pain that shot through him. He opened his eyes.
He had never thought any gadji could compare to Romany girls. But this one was remarkable, an otherworldly creature as pale as moonlight, her hair silver-blond, her features formed with tender gravity. She looked warm and innocent and very soft. Everything he wasn't. His entire being responded so acutely to her that he reached out and seized her with a quiet grunt.
She gasped a little but held still. Kev knew it wasn't right to touch her. He didn't know how to be gentle. He would hurt her without even trying. And yet she relaxed in his hold, and stared at him with those steady blue eyes.
Why wasn't she frightened of him? He was actually frightened for her, because he knew what he was capable of.
He hadn't been aware of pulling her closer. All he knew was that now part of her weight was resting on him as he lay on the bed, and his fingertips had curled into the pliant flesh of her upper arms.
"Let go," she told him gently.
He didn't want to. Ever. He wanted to keep her against him, and pull her braided hair down and comb his fingers through the pale silk. He wanted to carry her off to the ends of the earth.
"If I do," he said gruffly, "will you stay?"
The delicate lips curved. Sweet, delicious smile. "Silly boy. Of course I'll stay. I've come to visit you.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Seduce Me at Sunrise

“It was a noisy household, full of children. Kev could hear them beyond the closed door of the room he had been put in. But there was something else... a faint, sweet presence nearby. He felt it hovering, outside the room, just out of his reach. And he yearned for it, hungered for relief from the darkness and fever and pain.
Amid the clamor of children bickering, laughing, singing, he heard a murmur that raised every hair on his body. A girl's voice. Lovely, soothing. He wanted her to come to him. He willed it as he lay there, his wounds mending with torturous slowness. Come to me...”
― Lisa Kleypas, Seduce Me at Sunrise

“It's a little early to be falling asleep," says a voice, soft and low, at her side.
Startled, she spins to face the man who seems to have materialized from nowhere.
"By all accounts," he adds, "there are still hours of this to get through."
She doesn't recognize him. In the near-darkness his face is smooth like sculpted marble and his eyes shine almost black; his expression is hard to read- playful, perhaps- but it's his choice of words that intrigues her the most.”
― Hannah Richell, The Peacock Summer

“When's your birthday?" I asked.
"The twentieth of April."
"A Taurus."
"A what?" she asked.
"Astrology. Do you follow it?"
"Not only do I not follow it, I've never even heard of it."
I paused, wondering if the girl was kidding, but I didn't detect a note of sarcasm in her voice.
"I'm from Milwaukee- we don't believe things like that there, either. It's all hocus-pocus if you ask me."
"Milwaukee's in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's capital is Madison. Its state bird is the robin and it's known as the Dairy State because it produces more cheese and milk than any other state," she said, as if reading from a teleprompter. "This thing called astrology- what is it exactly?"
"That's a good question," I said. "It has something to do with the stars. I've never really understood it, either."
"You mean astronomy, then?"
"No, they're two different things- astrology and astronomy."
"So what are you in astrology terms?"
"A Scorpio."
"A scorpion. In other words, you're an eight-legged, venomous creature to be wary of?"
Her tone was deadpan.
"No poison here, just a nice guy from Milwaukee."
She let out a jovial laugh.
She was a curious creature, and I was intrigued. Her manner of speech was officious and old-fashioned. She was interested and reserved, insecure and confident, coy and bold. She was unlike anyone I had ever met.”
― Alex Brunkhorst, The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine

“It started when I met you in the rain forest. When I almost stepped on the cycad and the gloxinia, but you stopped me just in time."
"That's when I made you go back and get the moonflower."
"The umbilical cord, you called it."
"We walked to Casablanca through the jungle."
"And then alongside the ocean."
"I liked you already."
"I liked you, too. You introduced me to Tamatz Kauyumari. The oldest and biggest deer."
"I sang you his spirit song."
"And then he led us to Theobroma cacao."
"I saw Panthera onca following you through the jungle, twice."
"I never should have gone to the market without you, but you were sleeping."
"That's where you met the Cashier."
"And found the mandrake. And cichorium intybus. The plant of invisibility.”
― Margot Berwin, Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire

“Reese," I say, still in a daze. I am totally dead-fishing our handshake, but he doesn't seem to notice.
"Like Reese's Cups, the best candy in the history of the world?" He gives me a lopsided grin and I blink back at him.
"Uh...no. Like Reese Witherspoon, patron saint of Southern ladies who watch too many romantic comedies.”
― Kaitlyn Hill, Love from Scratch

“When she reached him, she put her hands on the bars and looked at him through them, her dark eyes wide. "It is you! Frasier said you were coming back, but he didn't know exactly when. It's been forever since you've answered a text. I was getting worried."
Her presence blew over him like a fresh breeze. He found himself smiling at her, a little goofily. He must still be travel-drunk. "It was an intense road trip.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Other Birds

“The onlookers' rudeness irked Lavender. How quickly their veneer of courtesy fell away. Beholding the man, they acted as if they viewed an exhibit in some monstrous hall of wonders. Terrible as the ruined side of his face was to look upon, balancing it, the good half was nothing short of godlike.
He stopped in front of her floral cart. As if swished away by some invisible magician's wand, the gawking masses faded, leaving only quietude---a radical privacy---as though a glass dome ventilated with fresh oxygen closed over the two of them, and they alone existed in the world.
"Your flowers steal my breath away," he said.
He wished to make a purchase.
"How many bouquets or tussie-mussies, Sir?"
"All of them," the man said, then pointed to the sachet that had, earlier, toppled into the dirt. "What is this?"
"A scent-filled sachet."
"Sewn with your own hands, I presume?" the man asked.
She nodded.
"What fills it?"
"Achillea millefolium. Yarrow. It heals. Protects. It's also known as a love charm."
"Heals, you say?" The man sighed. "If only it could." Then he inquired the cost---of everything.
Normally, Lavender ciphered like the wind, but a tallying void struck. She told him... a number... some totted up, air-castle sum bolted from her mouth.
He paid her. The sum almost overflowed her hands. She transferred the bounty into her coin purse.
"I worship at your cart," the man declared. "And tomorrow, with even the slightest sliver of serendipity, you shall hear Mr. Whitman's divine words.”
― Jeanette Lynes, The Apothecary's Garden

“But now that I was here, standing less than two feet away from the most gorgeous man I had ever seen...
Frederick J. Fitzwilliam's appearance was all I could think about.
He looked like he was maybe in his mid-thirties, though he had the sort of long, pale, slightly angular face where it was hard to tell. And his voice wasn't the only thing with high production values. No, he also had this ridiculously thick, dark hair that fell rakishly across his forehead like he'd sprung fully formed out of a period drama where people with English accents kissed in the rain. Or like he was the hero from the last historical romance novel I'd read.
When he gave me a small, expectant smile, a dimple popped in his right cheek.”
― Jenna Levine, My Roommate Is a Vampire

“Star Wars was good. I liked Han Solo."
"That makes sense. He's the nexus of true cowboy grit and a cocky, irreverent action hero--- flawed, ambitious, egotistical, daring, handsome, and charismatic. I always liked his swagger."
"What's swagger?" he asked.
"The combination of confidence and charm."
"Does he remind you of anyone?" He leaned back against a tree, pulling me with him. I could feel his tension ease, so I relaxed, sinking against his broad chest. "No," I said, my lips quivering with a smile. "No one at all."
"Hummph." He gave a snort of derision. "Are you sure? Maybe you should rethink your answer."
"If you're looking for a boost to your massive ego, I think you're more of a Star-Lord type. He's in the inverse of Han Solo. Cocky yet oblivious, womanizing, facetious, conceited, charming but arrogant."
He bristled behind me, his voice thick with indignation. "Conceited? Facetious? You obviously know nothing about me."
"That's true. I haven't even had a good look at your face."
"You'd change your mind if you knew me," he said. "You'd instantly think Han Solo and not Star-Lord."
"I look forward to being proven wrong.”
― Sara Desai, To Have and to Heist

“He was standing very close to her, and she felt something like an electric current running through her body as he held onto her hand. She looked up into his face; long and narrow, except for those cheekbones jutting out of it. Wide, almond-shaped eyes, as pretty as a girl's. They were a shifting, indefinable hue, the color of smoke and shadows.”
― Helen Maryles Shankman, The Color of Light