Pleasuring the Pirate by Emily Bryan

Rating: 4 stars
Published: August 2008
Pages: 302

Mistress Jacqueline Wren, illegitimate daughter of an infamous courtesan & chatelaine of Dragon Caern has been kept busy running the Drake estate and raising the five precocious daughters left by Lord Drake’s deceased brother. Pirate Captain Gabriel Drake returns home after purportedly being lost at sea, to find nothing is as when he left. His father & brother have passed on and Dragon Caern is in a woeful state despite Jacqueline's expert administrations. "Jack" is determined that Lord Gabriel will do what's right by his family & tenants and sets about finding a suitable heiress for Gabriel to marry thereby assuring the salvation of Dragon Caern and saving all from an uncertain fate.

Pleasuring the Pirate was a lively, fun read; a romance with more than a splash of adventure & just the right amount of steamy love scenes between the hero and heroine. The dialogue between Gabriel and Jacqueline is saucy, heated and often amusing. I was hoping to learn more of Gabriel's pirating days as the story unfolded but alas, that was not the case. I know it's a little thing but I felt like I was missing out on something, hmm that would make for another great story though!

Emily Bryan does a wonderful job with characterisation in this novel & not just with the hero and heroine, the minor characters are an intricate part of the story & certainly not overlooked. I fell in love with Gabriel's nieces; very mischievious and completely adorable little monkeys and I thought Meri a lovable old salt, his description of a smugglers hole left me giggling and gagging "When the tide is out, a crew brings its cargo in through the sea cave. When the tide comes in...Slick as snot, the door is closed."

Definitely looking forward to reading Distracting the Duchess (Emily Bryan's 1st novel) & Vexing the Viscount. She also writes Dark Ages historical romance under her real name Diana Groe.