His Stolen Innocent's Vow by Marcella Bell

Author:Marcella Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-01-08T18:39:29+00:00

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.

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