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

home, undoubtedly, she had absolute faith that her friend and fellow guard Jenna could handle her absence.

She also couldn’t remember the last time she’d played poker. It was one of the things she missed about what she now realized were her carefree days at the academy. Back then she hadn’t seen things in such a positive light.

They played Texas Hold’em. He dealt. She made no comment, and merely smiled when he began handing out cards.

He lifted an eyebrow and smiled back, a wild and mischievous charge thrumming between them.

Sixty hands and two hours later, while she hadn’t smashed him, it was clear who the real shark was.

“Merciless,” he said, tired, but relaxed in a way he hadn’t been at any other point in the evening.

It was all she could do to keep her eyes off him.

The velvet cream darkness of his skin was unlike anything she had ever encountered, and she found herself filled with the most curious urge to reach out and touch it, to run her fingertips lightly along his jaw, his arm, along the edge of his hip and down his thigh...

“Now, now, Helene. What are you thinking?” His grinning question interrupted her with a start and she let out a small gasp.

His dark gaze shot to her lips, moistened and parted, and for a second, they were caught together.

And then they weren’t. Then she was crossing the table and sitting on his lap, a ghost in the shell of her body that moved like a strange automaton, driven by a primal code.

He seemed to have respect for her vow.

She, it seemed, didn’t.

A part of her observed from a place of panicked remove, trying in vain to put a stop to the chain of events.

The rest of her made the first move. Or was it the third move? She’d lost count. It didn’t matter. It was too late to turn back.

She kissed him and he smiled into it, opening to her exploration with smooth ease, every inch her match.

For a woman who had always considered herself a solitary issue, it was a novel concept—to fit together with another human being so perfectly it seemed only divine design could have created it. Or at the very least, the longest odds the galaxy had ever seen, that random chance would construct two tiny specks, meant to join, in the infinite vastness of the entire universe.

With the exception of Queen Mina and her cousin, whose random stars had truly aligned, she didn’t even believe in love like that. To feel it, alive and beating, and turn away felt like sacrilege.

Though to call resisting what was between them—mired in murder and vengeance and dangerous gambles as it was—sacrilege felt a little self-aggrandizing, no matter that the pressure of her lips against his was exquisite torture she never wanted to end.

Her body was an unyielding weapon, her very form a tool she kept in smooth order, yet now it was in charge, begging for his touch in all the silent ways women’s bodies knew how...even when the woman did not.

Her breasts pressed into his chest, growing heavier, her nipples pebbling on contact. Her breath became erratic—deep, then shallow, then catching—as his fingertips trailed down her neck and farther to cup each soft peak in his hands.

She moaned when his thumbs found her nipples, running lazy circles around them while he took control of her mouth. Her breasts ached beneath his manipulations, the lightest touches making her gasp.

Her lips parted, her body yearning and straining toward him without her knowledge, a hot, heavy and needy siren song she didn’t know she was singing.

With a growl he swept her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Carrying her to his bed, he lay her down on her back, before pulling back from their kiss.

“I want to see you.”

His command was rough, but she only smiled, shaking her head, a teasing gleam lighting her eyes. Whatever controlled her now was more daring than she, because when she opened her mouth and spoke, her voice was thick and heavy and laden with things she had never done before, even if her honor insisted as she replied, “My vow.”

He leaned down over her, coming to kiss the sensitive spot behind her ear, and whispered, “There’s so much ground to explore between here and breaking it...”

She shivered beneath him—her curiosity was as piqued as her pleasure.

Kissing a trail down her neck, he found another treasure trove of nerve endings along her collarbone, his hand reaching for the hemline of her T-shirt. Lifting it, his knuckles brushed along the smooth, taut skin of her abdomen, and she shivered, the sensations rippling across her skin in erotic waves.

She wore no bra and he palmed her breast without a barrier. She arched into his hand with a breathless gasp. Pulling back, he made quick work of removing her top before taking off his own shirt. Her eyes widened, lighting with greedy hunger as the tip of her tongue moistened her lips.

No longer able to tolerate the space between them, Helene pressed into him, skin-to-skin, her body responsive and needy. And then his mouth returned to her breasts.

While he feasted, his hand traveled back down the plane of her belly and farther, reaching beneath the waistband of the shorts she wore.

She was as hot and wet as a tropical hurricane, and though she didn’t know where the knowledge came from, she knew that traveling through the eye of this storm would be one amazing ride.

But she was trusting him not to take them too far.

He slid his finger inside of her and her entire body clenched around him, motionless and tight for a moment, before she fell back in a heap of pulsing woman, her inner walls throbbing and squeezing around his finger, while she moaned and shuddered.

He showed her no mercy, pressing and circling the sensitive bud, overseeing it all every time the waves seemed to slow.

Only when she could truly take no more did she fall back against