Judith’s review of Pleasuring a Pirate
When Jenny Miller’s widowed mother becomes engaged to the father of Jenny’s ex-lover, Jenny is torn. She knows a renewal of her affair with Robert, her soon-to-be stepbrother, could jeopardize her mother’s marriage. But Robert was the sexiest, most commanding lover Jenny has had, and though he has a reputation as a heartbreaker, she yearns to get him back in bed.
When Robert plays the role of Pirate Blackwell in a video production, and Jenny plays the pirate’s wife, Robert’s passionate on-camera kiss sends Jenny’s libido into overdrive. Jenny is a dedicated lawyer who has prided herself on her self-control. But resisting the irresistible Robert? That’s a whole other case.
This is one of those light-weight novellas for which Ellora’s Cave is famous. Fun, full of erotic loving, and some very fun characters, especially the old lady who is always on the prowl for another juicy tidbit of gossip. Jenny and Robert and their families certainly work to give her a sack load of stuff to talk about. The story is about two families who have come together–Jenny’s widowed mother had fallen in love with Robert’s widowed father, and they are now planning to marry within two weeks of this story’s timeline. Six months earlier Jenny and Robert had met in San Francisco and had spent two hot, hot, hot weeks together, both of them agreeing that when they parted, their futures were parting as well. Now Jenny has moved out of New York City–the big city law firm was not anywhere near how she wanted to use her law expertise, and she has set up a practice in her hometown. She wants to help people, not just build a brilliant career. Robert has also shown up but she has determined that there is nothing more for them. He has chronic wanderlust and his unwillingness to make any kind of commitment has stamped “paid” to their chances for a future together.
This is certainly not a complicated story but is filled with the memories of an affair that lit up the Northern California skies for two weeks, and which keeps on “burning” within Jenny’s heart as well as her memories. If this is just about lust, why is she still so affected by Robert? Jenny’s conflict over Robert is complicated by his sister’s resistance to the marriage that has brought these two families together. She is unwilling to add to the potential conflict by acknowledging her feelings for Robert–and, it turns out, his continuing feelings for her. Things just keep on getting stickier and stickier. There is jealousy here, along with regret, hurt, remembered passion that turns into sleepless nights, and fear that the coming years will be lonely and loveless.
As always, these Ellora’s Cave novellas are a very nice read for a spring evening–just enough to keep the mind engaged and the libido massaged and to fill in a couple of nice hours in that comfortable chair. The story is nice, the characters are interesting, and the scenario is not really so far out that it is unbelievable. It’s one of those ebooks that is nice to have handy and that I find I like to re-read from time to time. I think you’ll enjoy it.
I give it a rating of 3.75 out of 5.
You can read more from Judith at Dr. J’s Book Place
This book is available from Ellora’s Cave Publishing. You can buy it here
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