Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 Carol Marinelli (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

gone for a frozen moment as he stared her dead in the eye, gaze searching and intense. Uncertainty, raw emotion and...vulnerability all poured out of the deep, soul-revealing orbs of his eyes, and in the face of it, she was nearly lost, though to what she didn’t know.

She had thrown him off balance for once. It had taken offering herself up on a platter in order to do so, but she had been successful. But as things shifted within her, she realized he wasn’t the only one.

“You’re sure?” His eyes left no room for anything but absolute and irrefutable commitment.

Hel swallowed. Was she? Jenna and the king’s guard could handle her absence, but could she handle the man before her? There had never been a shadow of a doubt before, but there had also never been a challenge before. In fact, she’d yet to meet a challenge she wasn’t a match for.

The reminder shored her when her heart was less certain.

“Yes,” she answered.

Triumph lit his eyes, his grin returning, his canines catching the light streaming in through the skylights, to shine bright white and sharp. He licked his lips and she was helpless to do anything but watch, fascinated, rapt, absolutely trapped.

He pushed away from the desk he was leaning against and closed the space between them until she was forced to tilt up her head to maintain their eye contact.

Instinctively she knew not to break it, knew it would trigger a chase that she wasn’t sure she was fast enough to outrun.

In truth, she wasn’t sure it hadn’t already begun.

He brought his hands to her jaw and ran his fingers along its stubborn line, tiny jolts of electricity shooting through her skin in the wake of their contact. She sucked in a breath and his smile reached his eyes, though it could never have been called warm.

No. Warmth was pacts and partnership. The light that lit his eyes was triumph—cold, bright and biting.

He angled her face up, tilting it toward his even farther for greater access. His eyebrows had drawn together while his eyes stormed, both pleasure and anticipation weaving together with his win.

“Seven days. No more, no less—unless, of course, it doesn’t take that long.” And then he kissed her.

If she hadn’t already been lost at sea, she would have sworn the earth roiled beneath her when their lips met.

Like magnets with opposite poles, they locked on contact, neither of them in control of the attractive force that held them. He plundered, of course—what else would he have done? He was a pirate.

She surprised herself, though, when she opened to the onslaught, rather than pushing him away immediately and with grand retribution—what she would have done with any other man.

Sensing the surrender in her softening, he took more. More surprise came as she welcomed his dominance, pouring her own fierce nature into it, just this one time completely unafraid of overwhelming someone else.

With his free hand he undid the top buttons and slipped his shirt over her shoulders—all without breaking the kiss.

Hel, drowning as she was in the sensations of his generous lips pressed against hers, didn’t care what else he did as long as he held his line, his tongue marauding, her system reveling in this rare moment of being overpowered.

Pressing closer, he drew her body against the long length of his hard body, heedless of his sea-soaked clothing, which did nothing to cool the heat building in her veins.

As he drew her nearer, his thigh pressed against the crease of her thighs, wedging an opening between them, his wet clothes a sensual abrasion against her sensitive bare skin.

The echo of a sharp inhalation bounced around the room when he made contact with the molten core of her, and it took her mind a moment to process the fact that the sound came from her. Rational mind struggling to come back to itself, back to its home in the driver’s seat of her consciousness, she tried to remember the terms of their deal and her vow and her very name, but couldn’t seem to hold thought in the face of each sensory revelation.

He tasted like salted caramel on a shortbread cookie, the sweet savory combination of the one thing her mother knew how to cook that she looked forward to every holiday season. A flavor she couldn’t get enough of.

He smelled like salt water and leather and rope, and something she had never encountered before but her mind told her was his skin, a scent she’d find nowhere else but here.

He completely encompassed her, hard and hot, pressing against her like a molten iron bar, reshaping her into something new.

Waves of electricity rode through the remaking of her until she couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t become merely a conduit—a vessel created to contain all his energy and power.

He growled and the sound rippled across her skin, leaving a trail of shivers before burrowing deep in her core.

Eyes closed, her remaining inputs heightened, overloading her system with information.

His fingertips were rough, his skin was smooth and soft. His lips were full and he was in absolute control of their kiss, not so much guiding her into new territory as grabbing her hand to take her running into the unknown, fast, heady and daring. And though the destination was forbidden, it was hard to remember that, when his invitation had been delivered in exactly her language.

Though her balance was excellent she was filled suddenly with a sense of vertigo, falling, the only constant thing his kiss as she went.

From far away, she heard the sound of laughter, growing closer as her breath turned shallow and quick. Her breasts were sensitive beacons on her chest, alert in a way she hadn’t known they had the capacity to be, straining for contact she wasn’t supposed to want.

Reading her mind again, his hand came to her breast, the thin fabric of his shirt serving only to enhance the erotic sensation of the searing heat of his hand cupping her swollen flesh.