So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.
"I have never said this to anyone before." Leo's voice was like ragged velvet. "But the idea of you with child is the most insanely arousing thing I've ever imagined. Your belly all swollen, your breasts heavy, the funny little way you would walk ... I would worship you. I would take care of your every need. And everyone would know that I'd made you that way, that you belonged to me."
Too bad,Elizabeth. You're Stuck with me.Not for a few decades,not for centuries. You're tied to me forever. That boy and girl offspring you talked off? They'll come from me--or no one.
"The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these. "I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,--I have a right. I love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, --you are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live."
It took so long to find you...and now I don't want it to change. I want it all set in amber. I want us and nobody else in the most selfish way you can imagine. I can't help it--I'm old-fashioned. I believe marriage is between a man and a man.
It is very protective of me. But certain sorts of protection, even care, can shade into a sort of desire for ownership. Certainly into a feeling that what is being protected is an earned exclusivity of access for the protector, not the privacy of the protected.