The Devil in Winter

There’s very little you can’t have…so long as you dare to reach for it.”

Really, someone should tell St.

Vincent that he’s a living cliché. He has become the embodiment of everything they say
about reformed rakes

You can s-send me away, but you can’t stop me from running back to you. I want
to spend every day with you. I want to watch you shave in the morning. I want to drink
champagne and dance with you. I want to mend the holes in your stockings. I want to
share a bed with you every night, and to have your children

You mean too much to
me

Half measures. My God. I love you so much that I’m drowning in it.

I can’t defend against it. I don’t know who I am anymore. All I know is that if I give in
to it entirely

Because
I love you, Sebastian…and I need you to love me back. And not in h-half measures

You’re not a wallflower. But you have my permission
to hide in corners, my sweet—so long as you take me with you. In fact, I’ll insist on it. I
warn you, I’m very badly behaved at such affairs—I’ll probably debauch you in
gazebos, on balconies, beneath staircases, and behind assorted potted plants. And if you
complain, I’ll simply remind you that you should have known better than to marry a
conscienceless rake

what you did while I was gone.”
“I helped Cam to arrange things in the office. And I burned all your letters from
lovelorn ladies. The blaze was so large, I’m surprised no one sent for a fire brigade

And Sebastian seemed to want to be treated like an
ordinary man—to have someone look beyond the mortal beauty of his facade, and ask
more of him than his erotic skills

He, who had never feared anything, was terrified of the power she had over him.

And he was afraid of his own desire to have her with him every minute of the day, to

stare at her, to hear her voice. He craved her touch. His skin seemed to drink in every

caress of her fingers, as if the sensation of her could be woven into the human fabric of

his body. It was different from mere sexual need…it was some kind of pathetic, fullblown

addiction for which there seemed to be no remedy