2
" Sugar,” Jake said, “I’ve wanted you since the first time you sassed me.”
“I wanted to punch you in the nose.”
He laughed and kissed her forehead. “My advertising skills left something to be desired.”
“You rooked three unsuspecting women.”
“I know.” He kissed her lips, taking his time. “I’m offering you a chance for payback.”
“And that payback is sex?” He smelled awesome, like a hot, sexy man who’d been in a kitchen trying to please her. Or maybe please himself. With Jake, you never knew.
He pulled her tighter against him, kissing her slowly, thoroughly. “I’d do my damnedest to make you a happy woman the second time I sold you something.”
Sugar looked into Jake’s eyes. He was too hot, too sexy, almost taking her breath away. “I think your gravy’s burning.”
“Nice try. I turned it off.” He tugged her hips against him, kissing her as if he’d never tasted anything as good as her mouth. Sugar moaned and let Jake hike her up on his waist. “If I’m moving too fast, say so. I’ll back off and feed you the best shrimp and steak dinner you’ve ever had. Just good friends breaking bread together.”
Sugar gasped as Jake sank his teeth gently into her lower lip. Heat and warmth filled her, stealing her desire to tell him no about anything. “I’m not really that hungry.”
His smile turned dangerous. “I am. "
― Tina Leonard , Hotter Than Texas (Pecan Creek, #1)
3
" And at the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney on Sixty Minutes, have you ever wondered why we say fiddle-faddle and not faddle- fiddle? Why is it ping-pong and pitter-patter rather than pong-ping and patter-pitter? Why dribs and drabs, rather than vice versa? Why can't a kitchen be span and spic? Whence riff-raff, mish-mash, flim-flam, chit-chat, tit for tat, knick-knack, zig-zag, sing-song, ding-dong, King Kong, criss-cross, shilly-shally, see-saw, hee-haw, flip-flop, hippity-hop, tick-tock, tic-tac-toe, eeny-meeny-miney-moe, bric-a-brac, clickety-clack, hickory-dickory-dock, kit and kaboodle, and bibbity-bobbity-boo? The answer is that the vowels for which the tongue is high and in the front always come before the vowels for which the tongue is low and in the back. "
― Steven Pinker , The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
5
" Take it from cats
If someone moves to make room for you, take up more room. If someone is looking over there, there’s something to see. If somebody sneezes, run. If someone brings a bag into your home, look inside it. If you don’t want someone to leave, sit on his suitcase. Clean between your toes. Flaunt your full figure. Hide loose change. Even though you can take care of yourself, it’s okay to let someone be nice to you. It’s fine to take a nap on the laundry. If you stand in a kitchen long enough, someone will feed you. If you’re alone in bed, use all the pillows. Just because it’s gorgeous outside doesn’t mean you have to go outside. Just because you can fit into something tight doesn’t mean that you belong in it. If you trust someone, open yourself like a cheap umbrella. If you want to be left alone, park yourself in a closet. If you want to surprise someone, lie in a bathtub and then jerk back the curtain when he sits on the toilet. If you’re not interested, don’t look interested. You don’t have to chase every bird that you see. "
― Helen Ellis , American Housewife
6
" How different this world to the one about which I used to read, and in which I used to live! This is one peopled by demons, phantoms, vampires, ghouls, boggarts, and nixies. Names of things of which I knew nothing are now so familiar that the creatures themselves appear to have real existence. The Arabian Nights are not more fantastic than our gospels; and Lempriere would have found ours a more marvelous world to catalog than the classical mythical to which he devoted his learning. Ours is a world of luprachaun and clurichaune, deev and cloolie, and through the maze of mystery I have to thread my painful way, now learning how to distinguish oufe from pooka, and nis from pixy; study long screeds upon the doings of effreets and dwergers, or decipher the dwaul of delirious monks who have made homunculi from refuse. Waking or sleeping, the image of some uncouth form is always present to me. What would I not give for a volume by the once despised 'A. L. O. E' or prosy Emma Worboise? Talk of the troubles of Winifred Bertram or Jane Eyre, what are they to mine? Talented authoresses do not seem to know that however terrible it may be to have as a neighbour a mad woman in a tower, it is much worse to have to live in a kitchen with a crocodile. This elementary fact has escaped the notice of writers of fiction; the re-statement of it has induced me to reconsider my decision as to the most longed-for book; my choice now is the Swiss Family Robinson. In it I have no doubt I should find how to make even the crocodile useful, or how to kill it, which would be still better.(" Mysterious Maisie" ) "