Since I mentioned the other day that I just got married a few months ago, I was kind of thinking back and reminiscing about my wedding day….and night. One of the things I was thinking about was how my husband removed all the pins from my hair (and trust me, there were a lot of pins) that night. We were just lying there in bed and I said I needed to take them all out. He pulled one, and then another, and then continued to do so until all the pins were removed. All the while we simply lay there, sometimes speaking, sometimes not.

That thought led to others. How sometimes the lightest caress strikes me deeper than the most sexual. How strange and intimate it felt to share my bowl of soup with him on our first date.

Naturally that train of thought led me to romance novels. I remember reading something once where the hero had reached into the heroine’s car through the open window and caressed her bare arm. At the time I felt a shiver up my spine and was more turned on – and more deeply touched – by that small caress than I’d been even during the love scenes.

It’s the intimate moments I read romance novels for. When he touches the small of her back because he knows she’s upset and he wishes to let her know he’s there. When she’s able to calm him with a look. When something as simple as a gesture conveys their feelings better than any words could ever do.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the spicy scenes as much as the next girl. The spicier the better, as a matter of fact. I also love fabulous dialogue and exotic settings and the sometimes in-depth character studies. But it’s the intimacy that really makes it a love story, in my opinion.

I remember reading Born in Fire (Book 1 in the Born In Trilogy) by Nora Roberts years ago. In it, Maggie, the heroine, has commitment issues. She and her hero have been “together” for quite some time, but it’s almost always fast and hard. He decides to slow it down and she has real issues with the intimacy of sex that way..soft, slow, sweet. That part of the book really struck me, because until that moment I hadn’t really noticed she’d been shying away from him even in the bedroom.

What about you? Have a favorite intimate scene from a novel? Do those parts touch you like they do me? Or do you prefer sexuality over intimacy?