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

He was old enough to know that once lost, hearts were unrecoverable, and that love, like water, could find a way through even the tightest seams.

A life at sea had taught him that fighting water was the fastest pathway to a watery grave. Like water, no matter the resistance, love got in whether you wanted or not. His father, his mother, his sister, Yancy, Prince Malik—he loved them all. And, for the most part, it was loving all of them that had led to his greatest heartbreaks. What lay between Helene and himself was, and should remain, about triumph and overdue justice, not tender feelings and heartache.

Where love traveled, pain followed, and for the first time in his life, he was ready to celebrate without enduring.

But the waters of love were drawn to the kind of strong physical attraction between them. Whether she realized it or not, he knew the dangers implied when bodies fit together like theirs seemed to.

And while her inexperience was clear, she wasn’t clumsy, but merely eager, her energy and attention bright with wonder at what came next. Her enthusiasm alone was a heady aphrodisiac, rousing him to heights he couldn’t remember reaching with any other woman.

His balls tightened at the thought, as if he was the one that was brand-new to all of this. And therein was the danger.

Though there was a first time with every new partner, there was something singular to what happened when he and Helene touched.

Either way, wisdom and experience aside, he wasn’t the only one with power when they came together...even if she had no idea what to do with it, or even that she had it in the first place.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HE HADN’T SPOKEN a word since she’d made her statement, but his eyes had communicated a world’s worth of data. Heat, anger, passion, desire and more danced across his endless brown gaze.

His arms had fallen out of their habitual crossed position, revealing the massive stretch of his muscled chest. His smooth, deep brown skin, decorated with a surprising arrangement of tattoos, well-placed and balanced on his body, and dusted at his pecs with faint curling hair, cried out to be touched, stroked.

He was more attractive in swim trunks than any man had a right to be. Out of trousers, his legs were thick, as defined and muscled as his chest, and incredibly powerful, even standing at ease in the pool as they were.

His shorts were the perfect length that it seemed only one man in a million could find—not so long he looked like he might still live with his mother, not so short he seemed like he had something to sell.

As tall as she was, it was rare for a man to make Hel feel small, but standing beside him, craning her neck to remain in the trap of his stare, she was hyperaware of how broad he was in comparison to her own narrow frame.

And if she wanted to keep her vow, if she didn’t want to be putty in Drake’s hands for the second time this evening, she needed to think of anything else.

Desperate, she reached for something she thought might get him talking, and get that look—intense, possessive and as tangible as a hand at the nape of her neck would have been—off his face. That look that felt like the home that she’d been waiting for her whole life.

“You told me how you got a private island, but how does a poor exile become a foreign-born aristocrat?” she asked. And she wanted to know. It was an incredible feat, particularly following the trauma her father had inflicted.

“Calla was a gift from King Amar for saving his son’s life.”

“A duchy is a pretty grand gift, even for saving a son. How old were you?” The idea of a king granting a young man a duchy was as medieval to her as Cyrano was thought to be throughout Europe.

Drake gifted her with one of his cocky smiles.

“Twenty-six, and, at the time, Calla was not without its...challenges. King Amar needed a man with naval experience he could trust to take care of the kinds of problems that Calla had, and when I came along, he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if it was a twenty-six-year-old hothead who’d seemingly come from nothing.”

She whistled. “What could you take care of as a young whippersnapper that had stumped a king?” she challenged.

Coming closer, his grin was wide, without a hint of irony. “Pirates.”

“I should have known,” she groaned.

“Calla had been in the possession of the crown for a number of years following the stripping of titles of the previous duke. By the time I came along, however, they’d turned it into a disaster. Caline was uninhabitable, the bay choked with debris and toxic algae, the arable cropland lying fallow and without irrigation, and everywhere you looked, pirate factions made it impossible for regular people to build lives.”

It sounded like a scene from a movie.

“Calla?” Hel asked, astounded. That sounded nothing like the warm and welcoming city she’d experienced.

He nodded. “It took most of the money I earned in the navy, all the way through being an admiral, but once I dealt with the pirates, new residents moved into the area, bringing new commerce along with them. It was only a matter of time before word spread that Calla was once again one of the most highly desirable locations in all of Sidra, and instead of draining my accounts, she began to return on my investment. Tenfold.”

Hel smiled. He was proud and he’d earned it. Unlike herself or her cousin or any of the other aristocrats she knew, Drake had built that himself. Not his father or grandfather before him. There was another difference between him and her father. He’d truly created the legacy he was proud of, and in all of that, had not let success corrupt him. He knew hard work and was willing to do it himself—it was a