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

Later, she would tell herself it was something about the way he’d gazed at her as if he’d brought her into being. She’d never seen anything like it before. All that fire. All that warning. And other things she couldn’t define.

He’d lifted two fingers and beckoned her near.

It hadn’t occurred to her to disobey. Kendra drifted closer, aware of herself in a way she never had been before. Her breasts felt thick and heavy in the bodice of her dress when she usually forgot they were there. Her thighs seemed to brush against each other, rich whispers. And between her legs, she felt herself heat, then melt.

But this spellbinding man gazed at her in stark command, and she could do nothing at all but go to him.

“So eager,” he murmured when she drew near.

Kendra hadn’t known what that meant, either. His words didn’t make any sense, and yet the sound of them soared inside of her. She felt as if she was a fluttering, desperate, small thing that he could easily hold in the palm of his hand—

Then he did.

He wrapped a hand around the nape of her neck and hauled her those last few, thrilling inches toward him. She found her hands on his chest and the sheer heat of him seemed to wallop her, making her knees go weak.

“Very well,” he’d said. “You’ll do.”

Then he’d set his mouth to her neck.

And Kendra had died.

There was no other explanation for what happened to her. His mouth against her skin, toying with her, tasting her. She felt her mouth open wide as if on a silent scream, but all she did was let her head fall back in delicious, delirious surrender.

The hand that gripped her neck dropped like a band of steel around her hips, drawing her even harder against him.

It was too much. She could hear the sound of the party in the distance, laughter and the clinking of glasses, but she was on fire.

And then she felt his hand move beneath the hem of her dress, volcanic and impossible.

She didn’t like to remember any of this. It had been three years and it was as if it had only just happened. She could feel everything as if it was happening now, high above Manhattan with her hands pressed to the glass that was all that separated her from stepping out into air.

A fall that seemed tame in comparison to Balthazar Skalas in a darkened gazebo on a summer night.

She had opened her mouth again, that time to stop the madness—or so she liked to tell herself now—but nothing came out. His mouth continued to toy with her skin, chasing fire along her clavicle and sucking gently on the pulse at the base of her neck.

And meanwhile, his hand, huge and utterly without hesitation, skimmed its way up the inside of one thigh to the edge of her panties. Then, before she could even find the words to protest—or encourage him, more like—he stroked his way beneath.

Her whole life, Kendra had considered herself remarkably self-possessed. It came from being raised like an only child, so much younger was she than her brother. Always in the company of adults. Always expected to act far older than she was. Her friends in boarding school and college had always allowed impetuousness to lead them down questionable roads, but never Kendra. Never.

But that night, none of that mattered.

Because Balthazar stroked his way into her melting heat, and Kendra...disappeared.

There was only that strong arm at her back, his mouth on her neck, his fingers between her legs as he played with her. He murmured something she didn’t understand, rough and low against the tender skin in the crook of her neck, that only later it would occur to her was likely Greek.

But she didn’t have to understand the words to know that whatever he said, it was filthy.

It had shot through her like a lightning bolt.

She’d made a noise then, a sob, and he’d growled something in reply. And then he’d pinched her. Not hard, but not gently, either. That proud little peak that already throbbed—

Kendra had bucked against him, lost and wild and heaving out another kind of sob, high-pitched and keening.

How had the whole of the East Coast not heard her?

When she finally stopped shaking, she’d found him staring down at her, a kind of thunder on that face of his, so harsh that it was almost sensual. Brutally masculine and connected, somehow, to all the places where she’d still quivered. To where his hand still cupped her, so that all her molten heat was flooding his hand.

A notion that made another shudder rip through her.

“You are surprising,” he’d said, rough and low. “I am not usually surprised. Come.”

He’d pulled his hand from her panties, and she’d thought that harsh line of his mouth almost curved when she’d swayed, unable to stand on her own once he released her.

“Come?” she repeated.

“You’re more of a meal than a snack,” he had told her then, too much heat in his dark gaze. “And I prefer to savor my meals. I have a house not far from here.”

Reality had reasserted itself with a sickening thud. What on earth did she think she was doing?

A question she still couldn’t answer, three years later.

The back of her neck prickled then. She sucked in a breath as she turned, then froze.

It was as if she’d summoned him. He stood in a door she hadn’t known was there, that must have opened soundlessly, because she had no idea how long he had been watching her.

He was just as she remembered. Balthazar Skalas, the devil himself, his deep dark eyes alive with mockery and that cruel twist to his mouth.

And she could tell, instantly, that he remembered her perfectly.

“Kendra Connolly,” he said, as if he was tasting her name. His dark eyes glittered and she felt it. Everywhere. “Your brazenness is astonishing, truly. Have you finally come to finish what you started?”

CHAPTER TWO

BALTHAZAR SKALAS DETESTED the Connolly family.

He had