“
lover, n.
Oh, how I hated this word. So pretentious, like it was always being translated from the French. The tint and taint of illicit, illegitimate affections. Dictionary meaning: a person having a love affair. Impermanent. Unfamilial. Inextricably linked to sex.
I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover, I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted lover, and to be loved.
There is no word for the recipient of the love. There is only a word for the giver. There is the assumption that lovers come in pairs.
When I say, Be my lover, I don't mean, Let's have an affair. I don't mean Sleep with me. I don't mean, Be my secret.
I want us to go back to that root.
I want you to be the one who loves me.
I want to be the one who loves you.
”
”
David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary)
“
He was having an illicit affair... with his own mate.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #10))
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I still couldn’t stop the sick feeling rising in my stomach. “This could be a disaster.”
“How? If anyone even finds it—and it’s not just sitting under a table right now—they’ll just have a good laugh at our sappy talk. No one’s going to be like, ‘Aha! Proof of an illicit human-and-vampire affair.
”
”
Richelle Mead (The Fiery Heart (Bloodlines, #4))
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Those who have greatest cause for guilt and shame
Are quickest to besmirch a neighbour's name.
When there's a chance for libel, they never miss it;
When something can be made to seem illicit
They're off at once to spread the joyous news,
Adding to fact what fantasies they choose.
By talking up their neighbour's indiscretions
They seek to camouflage their own transgressions,
Hoping that other's innocent affairs
Will lend camouflage to theirs,
Or that their own black guilt will come to seem
Part of a gerenal shady color-sheme
”
”
Molière
“
NEUTRALITY, BOREDOM become worse sins than murder, worse than illicit love affairs,” she told her Smith College students in 1958. “BE RIGHT OR WRONG, don’t be indifferent, don’t be NOTHING.
”
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Heather Clark (Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath)
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Julian," she said huskily, "you were right the other morning. You know me so well. I'm not made for illicit affaires, all that sneaking around to avoid discovery." In the dark, her hands crept up to his shoulders, then his face. Her finger teased through his hair. "Why should we hide at all? Let all London see us together. I don't care what anyone says or thinks. I love you, and I want the world to know."
He wanted to weep. For joy, for frustration. She was so brave, his beautiful Lily, and the situation was so damned unfair. It wasn't her fault that she made these heartrending declarations at a moment when their lives were probably in danger and he couldn't possibly reciprocate. That fault was his, for choosing to live the way he had and making the decisions he'd made. He didn't deserve her, didn't deserve her love. He most certainly didn't merit those warm brushes of her lips against his skin. But damned if he could bring himself to stop them.
"We're in love, Julian. Isn't it wonderful?"
"No," he murmured as she kissed him again. "It's not wonderful. It's a disaster."
Her lips grazed his jaw, then his throat. "I can feel you speaking, and I know you're probably making some valiant protest. But you know I can't hear those words. Your body is making an altogether different argument, and I'm listening to it." Her fingers crept inside his waistcoat, splaying over the thin lawn of his shirt. "Take your heart, for example."
Yes, take it. Take it and keep it, always.
”
”
Tessa Dare (Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club, #3))
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Take the words for what they are
A dwindling, mercurial high
A drug that only worked
The first few hundred times
”
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Taylor Swift
“
A history of nightlife!--what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their daily travails and successive political upheavals, but via the changes in their nightly celebrations and unwindings. History is, in this telling, accompanied by a bottle of Malbec, some fine Argentine steak, tango music, dancing, and gossip. It unfolds through and alongside illicit activities that take place in the multitude of discos, dance parlors, and clubs. Its direction, the way people live, is determined on half-lit streets, in bars, and in smoky late-night restaurants. This history is inscribed in songs, on menus, via half-remembered conversations, love affairs, drunken fights, and years of drug abuse.
”
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David Byrne (Bicycle Diaries)
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He craved her. She was honeycomb wrapped in velvet, her lips were rosebuds in spring, her nails were thorns, her eyes were oceans and he was drowning.
”
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Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
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To those two lines from Taylor Swift’s Illicit Affairs about a secret language—Thanks for existing. You helped inspire Declan and Iris’s non-translatable word game.
”
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Lauren Asher (Terms and Conditions (Dreamland Billionaires, #2))
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He knew she'd seen. And there was some silent communication between them, but she didn't understand the language. Had never spoken it or been around a man who could convey so much without saying a single word.
”
”
Tessa Bailey (It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1))
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Life is flinching in the midst of breathing, gasping at the thought of dying. It’s climbing ropeless up sheer rock faces, groping for the next finger-hole of hope. Steady on! Only a thousand feet to go and after that a jungle, a minefield, a rapids. (Can I stop smiling now?)
Once, not long ago, I was flung off the cliff of the moment, thrust into an illicit relationship with destiny, an affair not of my making. Was I making love or being raped? The lines were fuzzy.
”
”
Chila Woychik (On Being a Rat and Other Observations)
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And most of all...I learned that even in the darkest of nights, the stars will always shine. ~ Lynn
”
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Ava Harrison (Illicit (The Lancaster Family #0))
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A man who couldn’t tolerate small failings in himself was staggered by a big one.
”
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Joe Sharkey (Above Suspicion: An Undercover FBI Agent, an Illicit Affair, and a Murder of Passion)
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Great Corner Four relationships push us upward at all times. They will not let us stay where we are, lest we plateau, get bored, disengage, or go looking for another relationship that keeps us awake (say, in Corner Three). As I described earlier, humans are connection-seeking systems, but arousal-seeking ones, as well. If we get bored and disengaged, we can’t help but search for something to reenergize us, even if the stimulant comes in the form of an illicit affair or other risk-taking behavior.
”
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Henry Cloud (The Power of the Other: The startling effect other people have on you, from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond-and what to do about it)
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Pat was (illicitly, nocturnally) scattered on Eel Brook Common—even if he felt a literal-minded reluctance to walk there in the months that followed, when the frost on the grass or the wind-blown grit on the paths might hold microscopic parts of him. He still wondered, when he saw the damp chevrons of his boot soles on the floor of the porch, if in fact he wasn’t treading Pat back into the house.
”
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Alan Hollinghurst (The Sparsholt Affair)
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It was either Madison or Hamilton (the authorship of the individual papers is not always known) who in Federalist Paper #63 argued the necessity of a “well-constructed Senate” as “sometimes necessary as a defence to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions” because “there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.” And:
”
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Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
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The proximity of Mr. Brooks disrupting her personal space made Ava’s spine straighten, the blood wakening her brain and tickling her senses as she became as still as mouse right before a cat pounced on its prey. Besides the heat radiating from his mass, it was the top notes of his cologne—mint, lavender, and cinnamon—that coiled around her emotions, slowing her heartbeat to the kind of rhythm usually reserved for the deepest of dreams. However, the spicier notes of his scent hit the back of her throat, the cedar, amber, and sandalwood making her heart flutter like the wings of a hummingbird. His scent was equal parts freshness and softness as it was strength and sensuality.
”
”
Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
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However, Putin's tilt toward Trump appeared to have been motivated by something deeper than a desire for revenge against Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. Putin and Trump shared a similar zero-sum worldview and a penchant for operating in the shadows. Each man viewed the idea of a free press with contempt. They both believed that financial interests should be passed down to their children to create family dynasties ... Trump and Putin are both conversant with the secrecy world, practiced hands at using anonymous companies to wall off their activities and keep their business affairs secret. During the campaign, Trump reported that he had 378 individual Delaware companies, but the full extent of his business dealings remains hidden.
”
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Jake Bernstein (Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite)
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In the manner characteristic of their species they had lived hitherto without serious thought for matters of public concern. They were fully occupied in keeping themselves and their families afloat in the maelstrom of economic individualism. Inevitably their chief concern was private fulfilment, and its essential means, money. National affairs, racial affairs, cosmical events, were of interest to them only in their economic bearing, or at most as occasions of curiosity, wonder or ridicule. They produced and consumed, bought and sold, played ritual games with balls, and transported themselves hither and thither in mechanical vehicles in search of a goal which ever eluded them. They indulged in illicit sexual intercourse; or with public applause they married, propagated, launched their children upon the maelstrom. The overwhelming majority were enslaved by the custom of the herd. Nowhere was there any clear perception of the issues at stake, nowhere any recognition that the species was faced with the supreme crisis of its career. Scarcely a man or woman in Europe or America, still less in the remote East, realized that the great test of the human animal had come, and come, alas, too soon.
”
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Olaf Stapledon (Last Men in London)
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We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told we are wrong, we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem which is threatened . . . The little word ‘my’ is the most important one in human affairs, and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the same force whether it is ‘my’ dinner, ‘my’ dog, and ‘my’ house, or ‘my’ father, ‘my’ country, and ‘my’ God. We not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong, or our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of Mars, of the pronunciation of ‘Epictetus,’ of the medicinal value of salicin, or of the date of Sargon I is subject to revision. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
”
”
Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
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Like Felicity they methodically checked the house office, safe and family bank account details and financial affairs. Angelina then had Inspector Mick bug the boys’ homes, cars and offices and with the information she acquired came knowledge and contacts. She wrote a programme called listen, it saved all conversations digitally and converted it to text into a computer file in a remote location not traceable to her or anybody at 3WW but it recorded all his illicit dealings and it gave her valuable information. She hacked into their individual MIS computer systems and sent spyware via e-mail called virus protection free download and once opened it went through their c drive, all files on their computers, and copied all files to a ip address of a remote computer of Angelina’s request, in a phantom company named Borrow. All data was heavily encrypted and deleted after access and storage was onto an external hard drive storage box, deleting the electronic footpath. The spyware recorded their strokes on the keyboard and Angelina was able to secure even their banking pins and passwords and all their computer passwords. She had a brilliant computer mind, wasted in librarianship
”
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Annette J. Dunlea
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It’s the weird fate of illicit love to cohabit with lies. But what a paradox it is that a noble sentiment like love needs the prop of a base instinct for its survival! And it’s as if the pleasures of a liaison act as intoxicants to help dampen the sense of guilt in a woman’s heart!
”
”
B.S. Murthy (Benign Flame: Saga of Love)
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Conscious indifference in a marriage—by which I mean partnering on tax forms, greeting cards, and at cocktail parties, while seeking emotional connection, intellectual stimulation, and sexual solace elsewhere—dangerously undermines our sense of integrity, pawns our honor, siphons our creative energy, and buries both partners alive with resentment. It’s not the illicit love affair that should seem so shocking; it’s the fact that your authentic and unmet needs are so ignored, discounted, and disregarded by both of you that the soul feels compelled to search for something more in secret. This is the crying shame.
”
”
Sarah Ban Breathnach (Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self)
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Now the sun is wide awake, baring its teeth, making the sweat run down people's back. Before it will make its way across the sky and into the waiting arms of the Arabian Sea, so much will have happened: migrations into the city, births, marriages, dowry deaths, illicit love affairs, pay raises, first kisses, bankruptcy filings, traffic accidents, business deals, money changing hands, plant shutdowns, gallery openings, poetry readings, political discussions, evictions. Every event in human history will repeat itself today. Everything that ever happened will happen again today. All if life lived in a day. A day, a day. A silver urn of promise and hope. Another chance. At reinvention, at resurrection, at reincarnation. A day. The least and most of all of our lives.
”
”
Thrity Umrigar (Bombay Time)
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Gary made the word heterosexual sound like something out of The Joy of Extreme Sex. Lovechildren produced by illicit affairs were still a bit of a sore topic with me.
”
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J.L. Merrow (Heat Trap (The Plumber’s Mate, #3))
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How are you supposed to enjoy illicit affairs and birthday debauchery under these conditions?
”
”
Lex Croucher (Gwen & Art Are Not in Love)
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It was either Madison or Hamilton (the authorship of the individual papers is not always known) who in Federalist Paper #63 argued the necessity of a “well-constructed Senate” as “sometimes necessary as a defence to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions” because “there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.
”
”
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
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Where else am I meant to get coffee? Do you honestly expect me to go out to do coffee runs? I have enough on my—”
“Ms. Archer, do you even drink coffee?” Nate interrupted.
“What? No, I don’t usually dri—”
“Then it isn’t a problem,” he clipped out, his fingers drumming impatiently on his desk.
“Yes, it is! I’m not running around like a headless chicken to get you your caffeine fix every day!” Ava huffed, her hands on her hips before her eyes dropped to his desk, noticing too late the branded cup of coffee already sat there upon its coaster. “Ohh.
”
”
Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
“
Her blue orbs watched as Mr. Brooks took his seat in front of her and crossed his arms with impeccably straight posture. She noted that he had the rosiest and fullest lips she had ever seen on a man before, his eyes so warm and yet his expression so cold like his face captured winter and summer into one season. He reminded her of a stormy day. A nice one. Even under the slight beard he had, she could tell he had a jawline for days, his face capturing the heart of Hollywood.
”
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Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
“
It would be fitting that she would smell as enticing as every natural bloom, as alluring as a red rose, as free as springtime blossom rain, with just a hint of debauchery. She was an aromatic song, her essence the floral orchestra of the soul, and it was something that Nate knew he would forever crave.
”
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Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
“
Has anyone ever told you that you have a serious attitude problem, Ava?” he ridiculed, growing tired of her smart mouth as he began pressing forward, making her retreat backwards despite her provoking expression.
“Has anyone ever told you what they say about a woman with an attitude, Nate?” she challenged with a coy smile, taking small steps back as her boss closed in on her like a lion closing in on its prey, but she refused to back down, a lioness asserting its position in the pride.
“Enlighten me,” Nate prompted, stopping when Ava’s back pressed up against a wooden support beam holding up the small hut. If she felt intimidated by his presence, she certainly did not show it.
“A fierce man can handle a fierce woman. A fragile man will say she has an attitude,” Ava stated, her hands tucked behind her back casually as she leaned her head against the beam and stared up at Nate from beneath the canopy of her dark lashes.
”
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Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
“
I’m not as perfect as you think, sweetheart!” He laughed, shaking his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Oh yeah? Show me one defect, Brooks,” Ava challenged, grinning as he sat upright.
“Alright, see this tooth?” He pointed to one of his incisors. “Fake. Lost it tryna impress a girl at college.”
“What, like in a fight?” Ava’s eyes widened like a drama-thirsty vampire.
“No…more like me tryna bust open a beer cap with my tooth and then, pop!”
“Oh my God, that is tragic!” she squealed, her hand covering her mouth as she burst out laughing so hard that gentle snorts left her nostrils. “You’re a closet dork!”
“Yeah, well, never judge a book by its cover!” Nate laughed with her.
“Mhm, a very tall, dark, and sexy book at that!
”
”
Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
“
Well, personally I think you look bloody lush in red…even if that dress is a little revealing for work,” Samantha said over a video call, still lying in bed with a cup of tea. Her short caramel locks stuck up in every direction as she rubbed her eyes and yawned. “But then again, you don’t have spaniel ears for tits and can get away with that.”
“But seriously, Sam, does it give the right first impression?” Ava sighed and ran her immaculate manicure down over the body-contouring pencil dress.
“Oh, you mean the ‘back the fuck off, this is my daddy’s office and I’m not taking orders from a loud-mouthed American’ impression?” Sam trilled in thick Scottish and was clearly amused with herself as she hid her smirk behind her favourite llama-shaped novelty mug.
“That is the very look we’re going for, my lass!
”
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Holly Dixon (ILLICIT AFFAIRS)
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And that's the thing about illicit affairs, and planned destined meetings and longing stares
It's born from just one single glance
But it dies, and it dies, and it dies
A million little times
”
”
Taylor Swift