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

he was desperate to cup, hold, slide his finger along the seam of and slip inside... Muscles straining, he refrained. Instead, he brought his fingertip back up to the center point between her eyebrows and trailed down, skin lightly touching skin, all the way down, over her chin, down her neck, between her breasts, past her belly button, only to stop at the beginning of that triangle. She sucked in her breath on a soft hiss, her skin tightening, back arching. Her skin was soft and sensitive for a woman who made a living of being hard.

Moonbeams streaming in through the sky-view wall lit and outlined her perfection—her nipples, dusky rose and proud, her breasts, soft and pliant, each one his perfect handful, her waist, slender and long, the rounded swell of her hips and muscular curvature of her backside, each line an artist’s, emphasizing her form with shadow and highlight.

Rock-hard and throbbing, the tip of his manhood was damp in anticipation of her, as if it knew this was her first time, knew that even though he would take care of her, that he would ensure she was as wet the ocean floor before he entered her, that she would need all of that and more to ease his entry.

He was a lot to take for the first time, but he had no doubt she could handle him—all of him—like a custom-made sheath. A captain learned to trust his instincts, and his instincts were screaming that he had found his Penelope. But unlike famous Odysseus, he would not ask her to put her life on hold. He would set her free.

But not until he’d heard her beg. If she was going to make his dreams come true, he was going to blow her mind.

While she still shook, he took her further under his command, gripping her hips on either side, strong fingers digging into the taut flesh. Adjusting her position, he sat her on the edge of the pool and spread her legs, an open buffet for his feast.

Languorous and love-drunk, she was unprepared for the onslaught. He attacked directly, no longer content to resist the siren song of her scent.

She tasted like citrus, snapping him back to the bright bergamot that infused the private courtyard air outside his childhood bedroom in Andros, a sensory pleasure long-lost—she tasted like home. Even when he’d tasted her for the first time, the knowledge hadn’t surprised him, as if some part of him had known the moment he’d laid eyes on her, watching her argue with the ghost of her father.

He could have told her there was no use arguing with that man.

But then he wouldn’t have her here, slick and hot and sumptuous.

She screamed his name as his tongue teased the crease at her core.

Her fingers found his shoulders, her hands strong and capable, and she held onto him like a life raft when, in fact, he was the storm.

He couldn’t remember ever being this hard, this eager, this close to the edge from little more than the sound of her pleasure and a taste.

Of course, he couldn’t remember a taste quite like her before, either. And as she bulldozed the competition in his record book, he was taken aback at what was happening to him. She was mesmerizing him, luring him into a dazed stupor with every passing and savored second he spent with his hands on her, his mouth on her...and if he went further, if he steered them into a union, as was his undeniable plan, she would wreck him.

What was happening between them, what blossomed, was as far from the careless encounters of a sailor on leave as a lake from the ocean. This was the stuff of forever, and deeper connection, and baring real emotions. Everything paled in comparison to Hel because he had never felt this for another woman. Their bodies told him what their battle-weary hearts resisted: this was the stuff of love.

It was too late to change course now, though. Sometimes the only way out of a storm was through it.

He was ready for the tempest when she came apart the second time, lapping her up like a fool in the rain. Her thighs clenched around his head and he smiled against her, glorying in each and every one of her unintentional reactions, each reflexive tightening and release, each pulsing wave that carried her away with as much surprise as joy.

She would carry this memory of him with her forever. He’d make sure it was unforgettable.

He held her there, helpless to both his attack and her pleasure, until her hips relaxed in his hands and the pulses of her climax slowed, her breathing jagged and airy.

Again, he knew she thought she was done, wrung out. It was written in the boneless fall of her body, the dazed glimmer in her eyes.

Humming a long “mmmmm” against her, he began to trail kisses upward again, over her stomach, before stopping to shower her breasts with more attention. In no time at all, her soft sighs grew heavier, elongated and interspersed with drawn-out pauses, moments of time standing still.

While he kissed the plump underside of her breasts, his hand returned south, finding the heat of her core. Fingers once again playing along her entrance, his thumb found the little bud at the top that held the key to it all and pressed with gentle firmness, before beginning the alternating dance of pressure and release that would push her over the edge yet again.

If anything, she was more responsive. And why should he be surprised? Her body was a well-honed machine—of course, she responded to practice like a master. She was a true wonder.

He slipped one long finger inside as she moaned and her inner muscles clenched around him so hard he groaned, sweat beading on his forehead. It was absurd—she couldn’t be this tight and hot and not kill him. Her body was a vise around his finger, so snug the thought even flitted across his