When is love really love?

What do you think about love? What a tricky question, but I’ll help out by giving you some quotations, and you can take your pick. I found these by googling ‘love’, and there are pages more. Here are the ones that most appealed to me.

1. It’s useless to hold a person to anything he says while he’s in love, drunk, or running for office. Shirley MacLaine.

2. Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so. David Grayson.

3. Love does not dominate, it cultivates. Wolfgang Von Goethe.

4. Love is a game that two can play and both win. Eva Gabor

5. Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other. Euripides.

So which one appeals to you the most? Would love to hear your vote.
Naturally I want to include a passage from my latest release, out just last week from MuseItUp Publishing. This one is a sensual historical, NOT my usual genre, and it was a learning experience to write. Lots of research to be careful with.

"Certainty swept over her like the waters of a flood. He was unlike any man she’d known or even imagined. He was honorable, truly honorable, and his word inviolate. All the images of her childhood of disreputable scamps who charmed and then disappeared were just that, images. Josh was real, blood and bones and heartbeat real. How fortunate to be in bed with him, where surely she could seduce him into becoming the passionate lover she craved. Wanted from the moment she’d stepped from the draperies and trained her pistol on his exciting, masculine body. If she desired him, she didn’t have much time. Tomorrow they’d be nearing Brussels. He’d be immersed in his obligation to get his warning to Wellington. Just as he should be. Tonight she could be sure of privacy. All her doubts melted away, as she set out to seduce him. She might be a neophyte in the matter of love, but she knew exactly what to do. She would do to him what so pleasured her. Josh still lay on his back, and she reached over and unbuttoning his shirt, slid her hand inside, walking her fingers through the crisp dark hairs she admired. She found a nipple and began to caress it as he had hers, circling it with her fingers as it instantly hardened. He shot up, sitting and glaring at her. “Sara, you idiotic minx! Do you have any idea what you are doing? I am not a stone statue, you know.” His voice was so indignant she laughed. “I sincerely hope you are not, my lord Josh,” she said in as low and alluring a voice as she could summon. “I am trying to seduce you, in case you’re too dense to understand.” She leaned over and slowly kissed his nipple, laving it with her tongue. He almost came off the bed. “You wanted me to come to you, milord. With desire. Does this show enough desire to qualify?” With a low groan, he clutched her to him, kissing her face and hair with wild abandon. “I think it will do very well, my love,” he gasped. “But are you sure, Sara? Really and truly sure?” She could feel the heat in her own voice as she answered him. “I want to be your wife, Josh. Please show me how.” Nothing she could have said would have more inflamed him. In those few words she told him how much she wanted him, and also how inexperienced she truly was. He’d gladly take her to paradise, but he’d do it with consideration and love. He’d never bedded a virgin, and he prayed he wouldn’t hurt her. His blazing smile showed her all the love in his heart."