None of the fools you’ve known have kissed you like this–have they? Your precious Charles or Frank or your stupid Ashley–” His eyes were wide and blazing queerly and the tremor in his arms frightened her. He pressed her head back hard against his shoulder and she had a dizzy glimpse of his face.

“Stop–please, I’m faint!” she whispered, trying to turn her head weakly from him. And before a swimming giddiness spun her round and round, she knew that she was kissing him back. His insistent mouth was parting her shaking lips, sending wild tremors along her nerves, evoking from her sensations she had never known she was capable of feeling. He bent back her head across his arm and kissed her, softly at first, and then with a swift gradation of intensity that made her cling to him as the only solid thing in a dizzy swaying world. And the quiet face of Ashley Wilkes was blurred and drowned to nothingness. She felt again the rush of helplessness, the sinking yielding, the surging tide of warmth that left her limp. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchellįor the sheer audacity of Butler, and for how much we wish he’d sweep us off our feet as well.īefore she could withdraw her mind from its far places, his arms were around her, as sure and hard as on the dark road to Tara, so long ago.

The audacity of a kiss