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

jaw, his touch reverent as he tilted her face up toward his to plunder the depths of her mouth further. And then his fingers were in her hair, massaging her scalp as his lips made mush of her mind.

Everything in her strained toward him, reaching for that elusive union her body insisted was their ultimate destination. Her breasts ached, longing for what she didn’t know, while everywhere her skin flushed and burned.

His lips followed his hands, tracing her jawline to find her earlobe, where he bit her softly before whispering something long and lovely in Sidran. And then all the air, and her wits, rushed out of her at the same time, every ounce of her focus zeroed in on the point where his thumbs pressed against her aching nipples.

Blue triangles of swimsuit separated them, but she felt the contact as acutely as if she had been nude, each rosy peak exposed beneath the dark sky.

And then he was rolling the hard pearls between his thumb and forefinger, his palms joining in the sensual explosion, cupping and lifting her breasts, and she was arching her back, pressing herself farther into his hands.

Snaking an arm around her waist to hold her, he kissed down her neck, pillaging the ivory column all the way, his free arm working its way behind her back and pulling the string that held her top in place.

He made quick work of the string around her neck, tossing the top to the side as he pulled back to feast on the sight of her bare breasts. The look in his eyes said he was ravenous for a sustenance only she could provide. In that instant, she felt what it was to be a font—a source of life, beauty and wonder—rather than an embattled soldier with grim purpose.

It felt like earning wings.

His hot mouth locked around the needy peak of her nipple and she soared, the sensation breaking free in the form of his name on her lips, the syllable a drawn-out cry of pleasure. Her legs squeezed around his waist of their own volition, the movement a subconscious flirtation, drawing him nearer to the untapped power source at her core.

Her movement set off a tremor of reaction through his body that she felt deep within her own. She marveled that she had the ability to make this incredible man shake. The thought went straight to her head, light and bubbly even as it was tremendous, like standing on the edge of a skyscraper.

Her breath came in shallow pants as he devoured her, switching to the other breast only when he’d completely ravished the first, his free hand quickly coming to replace the spot where his mouth had been.

She was putty in his hands, his to play with and mold, pliable and unguarded in a way she hadn’t been since long before the days they’d chased each other through the flowers as children.

He didn’t waste the opportunity.

His tongue traced lines of fire around her breasts, driving her mad in a tempest of temperature and taste and tightening. His beard and teeth gave an edge to every sensation, the combination of sandpaper and silk keeping her spinning.

And then he said her name.

It was more of a breath than even a whisper, but it shot through her, lacy and lithesome as it was, rolling off his tongue with hushed reverence.

“Helene.”

No one called her that. Hel. D’Tierrza. Duke. Captain. Not even her mother, who preferred the term daughter most of the time.

Hel had always hated Helene, fussy and formal, perfect and composed—everything she stood in opposition of.

Until now. The moment he said it, his tone worshipful, his lips soft against her skin as he spoke, she was transformed.

Helene had the power to bring this god of the sea to his knees. It was the knowledge, from wherever it arose, that he could weather her most powerful storms, and be strong, steady and, most of all, kind.

Rock-hard and warm beneath her hands, he was living, throbbing, ready proof that maybe she was wrong, that maybe, just maybe, incredible strength could come without cruelty.

And whether it was due to that seismic realization or the onslaught of his sensual attack, her body began to tremble. What had begun as faint tremors grew into stronger, more insistent rolling waves, threatening to carry her out to sea, relentless in their increasing strength as her power to resist waned.

“Show me,” he demanded, his voice guttural, all the more commanding for playing her like a maestro at his instrument. “Show me how you fall apart.”

She wanted to fight. She wasn’t the kind of woman who complied easily—she was famous for it—and yet her body strained toward his, the gnawing hunger coalescing where she shamelessly pressed against him.

Yet still she resisted.

She might retreat, but she didn’t surrender.

“Do it now,” he said, and he took one nipple in his mouth at the same instant as he pinched the other and she exploded into a brand-new galaxy—herself, her energy, her very life bursting into a vast collection of stars, planets and memories, spread out before her for an endless second.

His palm scraped lightly down the long plane of her belly, branding her as his as surely as a cattleman’s mark. Then the tips of his long fingers slipping beneath the top edge of her swimsuit and stopped.

He pulled back, commanding her gaze. He was beautiful—his brown eyes burning in low light, his incredible physique harnessed and focused entirely on her, his glorious erection obvious—and he was absolutely not going any further without her signal.

And even though none of it was for her, not marriage, and certainly not children, just for tonight, in this magical place so far from her regular life, she wanted to pretend it was. Disheveled and thoroughly taken, her lips swollen and sensitive, her deepest core throbbing and hungry, aching, craving and insistent that there was more despite his thorough gorging, she nodded.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SLIDING HER BLUE bikini down revealed the trim triangle of white-blond curls, a treasure