He looked relaxed … and warm. So warm. So absolutely not cold, or controlled. And part of her suddenly wondered, if he had ever been cold, or if she’d just come to think of him that way as they grew apart in those last few months of their marriage?

Which led to another question—had he ever been that much in control, too? Or had she turned him into something he wasn’t? Her imagination making him into an intimidating and controlling man because she felt so out of control?

God, she hoped not. But there was no time to mull over the past. She’d reached Drakon’s side and felt another electric jolt as his gaze met hers and held. She couldn’t look away from the warmth in his amber eyes. Part of him still burned and it made her want to burn with him. Madness, she told herself, don’t go there, don’t lose yourself, and yet the air hummed with heat and desire.

How could she not respond to him?

How could she not want to be close to him when he was so fiercely alive?

“It’s going to be all right,” he murmured, his deep voice pitched so low only she could hear.

Her lovely, lovely man that made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the entire world. Her lovely, lovely man that had pushed her to the brink, and beyond, and he still didn’t know … still had no idea where she’d been that first year after leaving him, or what had happened to her trying to separate herself from him.

Part of her wanted to tell him, and yet another part didn’t want to give him that knowledge, or power. Because he could break her. Absolutely destroy her. And she wasn’t strong enough yet to rebuild herself again … not yet. Not on top of everything else that had happened to her father and her family with the Amery scandal.

“I promise you,” he added.

She heard his fierce resolve and her heart turned over. This is how she’d fallen in love with him—his strength, his focus, his determination. That and the way he smiled at her … as if she were sunshine and oxygen all rolled into one. “Yes,” she murmured, aware that once upon a time he’d been everything to her … her hope, her happiness, her future. She missed those days. Missed feeling as if she belonged somewhere with someone.

There was a flicker in his eyes, and then he made the introductions. “Morgan, this is Rowan Argyros, of Dunamas. Rowan, my wife, Morgan Copeland Xanthis.”

Morgan forced her attention from Drakon to the stranger and her jaw nearly dropped. This was Rowan Argyros? This was one of the founders of Dunamas Maritime Intelligence?

Her brows tugged. She couldn’t mask her surprise. Argyros wasn’t at all what she’d expected.

She’d imagined Drakon’s intelligence expert to look like one, and she’d pictured a man in his forties, maybe early fifties, who was stocky, balding, with a square jaw and pugilistic nose.