Books
14 Amazing Make-Out Scenes In Literature
I don't know about you, but finding a great make-out scene in an already fantastic book is the cherry on top for me. There's a lot of ways to mess up writing a kissing, or any sexy scene in books because it's all so physical — but there's also a lot of ways to make it memorable. In books, a great make-out scene consists of the narrator's feelings, thoughts, and atmosphere around the couple. It can be incredibly sweet and romantic, or sensual and hot. And I'm sure you have a few favorites that you may or may not have read and reread multiple times.
A lot of young adult books capture these steamy make-out scenes due to passionate first love, first kiss, and all those epic firsts. That doesn't mean that classic lit doesn't have many beautiful make-out moments, though. From some of the best literary novels of all time to brand new books just hitting the shelves, kissing scenes keep getting better and better in the world of literature.
With Valentine's Day just a few days away, it's time to celebrate love, happiness, and really great kissing. If you want something amazing to read, but aren't necessarily in the mood for a major romance novel, here are 14 of the best make-out moments throughout literature:
1. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
And he’s kissing me. Once, twice, until I’ve had a taste and realize I’ll never have enough. He’s everywhere up my back and over my arms and suddenly he’s kissing me harder, deeper, with a fervent urgent need I’ve never known before.
2. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Before 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. She felt again the rush of helplessness, the sinking yielding, the surging tide of warmth that left her limp. And the quiet face of Ashley Wilkes was blurred and drowned to nothingness. 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. 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. And before a swimming giddiness spun her round and round, she knew that she was kissing him back.
3. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
I turned around and found her face, and her mouth was already waiting like a question. I’m not gonna make it out to be something that it wasn’t: It was perfect—Coley’s soft lips against the bite of the liquor and sugary Coke still on our tongues. She did more than just not stop me. She kissed me back.
4. City of Glassby Cassandra Clare
He bent down, his lips against her cheek, brushing it lightly—and still that light touch sent shivers through her nerves, shivers that made her whole body tremble. "If you want me to stop, tell me now," he whispered. When she still said nothing, he brushed his mouth against the hollow of her temple. "Or now." He traced the line of her cheekbone. "Or now." His lips were against hers.
"Or—"
But she had reached up and pulled him down to her, and the rest of his words were lost against her mouth. He kissed her gently, carefully, but it wasn’t gentleness she wanted, not now, not after all this time, and she knotted her fists in his shirt, pulling him harder against her. He groaned softly, low in his throat, and then his arms circled her, gathering her against him, and they rolled over on the grass, tangled together, still kissing.
5. Just One Day by Gayle Forman
When he finally kisses my mouth, everything goes oddly quiet, like the moment of silence between lightning and thunder. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi. Five Mississippi.
Bang.
We kiss again. The next kiss is the kind that breaks open the sky. It steals my breath and gives it back. It shows me that every other kiss I’ve had in my life has been wrong.
6. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it — a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!
7. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
“Kiss me,” I say. He does.
We are kissing like crazy. Like our lives depend on it. His tongue slips inside my mouth, gentle but demanding, and it’s nothing like I’ve ever experienced, and I suddenly understand why people describe kissing as melting because every square inch of my body dissolves into his. My fingers grip his hair, pulling him closer. My veins throb and my heart explodes. I have never wanted anyone like this before. Ever.He pushes me backward and we’re lying down, making out in front of the children with their red balloons and the old men with their chess sets and the tourists with their laminated maps and I don’t care, I don’t care about any of that. All I want is Étienne.The weight of his body on top of mine is extraordinary. I feel him—all of him—pressed against me, and I inhale his shaving cream, his shampoo, and that extra scent that’s just … him. The most delicious smell I could ever imagine.I want to breathe him, lick him, eat him, drink him. His lips taste like honey. His face has the slightest bit of stubble and it rubs my skin but I don’t care, I don’t care at all. He feels wonderful. His hands are everywhere, and it doesn’t matter that his mouth is already on top of mine, I want him closer closer closer."
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermi- one’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broom- stick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.
“Is this the moment?” Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. “OI! There’s a war going on here!”Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.“I know, mate,” said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, “so it’s now or never, isn’t it?"
9. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
"Augustus Waters,” I said, looking up at him, thinking that you cannot kiss anyone in the Anne Frank House, and then thinking that Anne Frank, after all, kissed someone in the Anne Frank House, and that she would probably like nothing more than for her home to have become a place where the young and irreparably broken sink into love.
“I must say,” Otto Frank said on the video in his accented English, “I was very much surprised by the deep thoughts Anne had.”And then we were kissing. My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body; this cancer-ruined thing I’d spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle, worth the chest tubes and the PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors.
10. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
11. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
She drew him toward her with her eyes, he inclined his face toward hers and lay his mouth on her mouth, which was like a freshly split-open fig. For a long time he kissed Kamala, and Siddhartha was filled with deep astonishment as she taught him how wise she was, how she ruled him, put him off, lured him back... each one different from the other, still awaiting him. Breathing deeply, he remained standing and at this moment he was like a child astonished by the abundance of knowledge and things worth learning opening up before his eyes.
12. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Cath closed the book and let it fall on Levi’s chest, not sure what happened next. Not sure she was awake, all things considered.The moment it fell he pulled her into him. Onto him. With both arms. Her chest pressed against his, and the paperback slid between their stomachs.
Cath’s eyes were half closed, and so were Levi’s and his lips only looked small from afar, she realized, because of their doll-like pucker. They were perfectly big, really, now that she had a good look at them. Perfectly something. He nudged his nose against hers, and their mouths fell sleepily together, already soft and open. When Cath’s eyes closed, her eyelids stuck. She wanted to open them. She wanted to get a better look at Levi’s too-dark eyebrows, she wanted to admire his crazy, vampire hairline—she had a feeling this was never going to happen again and that it might even ruin what was left of her life, so she wanted to open her eyes and bear some witness.
But she was so tired. And his mouth was so soft.
And nobody had ever kissed Cath like this before. Only Abel had kissed her before, and that was like getting pushed squarely on the mouth and pushing back.
Levi’s kisses were all taking. Like he was drawing something out of her with soft little jabs of his chin. She brought her fingers up to his hair, and she couldn’t open her eyes.
13. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
What’s gotten into me? Now I really can’t breathe. A situation made worse by the lips that are suddenly pressing
into mine.
Our tongues have fallen madly in love and gotten married and moved to Paris.
After I’m sure I’ve made up for all my former years of kisslessness, I say “I think if we don’t stop kissing, the world is going to explode.”
“Seems like it,” he whispers.
14. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest handThis holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready standTo smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIETGood pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,Which mannerly devotion shows in this;For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEOHave not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIETAy, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEOO, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIETSaints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEOThen move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIETThen have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEOSin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!Give me my sin again.
JULIETYou kiss by the book.
Images: Fotolia; Giphy
