by Lucy Monroe
“Continue to tease me at your peril, woman.” But he made no move to undress her himself, his hands fully occupied with her breasts, his body hot and hard against hers.
She undulated against him, rubbing her bare stomach against his still-covered erection. “But teasing is what you like, my darling Dre.”
He groaned, one hand snaking around her to grind her into his body possessively. “Say that again.”
“You like being teased. We both know it.” The only thing he liked better was teasing her to the point of incoherence.
“Not that.”
She had to stop and think, her brain not functioning on optimum at that moment. “You want me to call you ‘my darling Dre’ again?”
“Yes.”
Oh, that was definite. She’d never used endearments with Andreas back in the day. She hadn’t felt confident enough to despite his dropping things like “pethi mou” and “Kay-love” into conversation. She’d been afraid if she did, it would reveal the depth of her feelings.
But now, well, the words just felt flirty...right. And maybe she didn’t want to keep hiding everything so perfectly. After all, hiding her every inclination before hadn’t managed to save her relationship.
“My darling Dre, is this what you want?” she asked as she wiggled the teal pants down her hips, kicking her shoes off and stepping out of the fabric in the same set of movements.
She stepped back, away from his touch, straightened and cocked one hip, offering him a full-bodied view, allowing herself the same luxury. Unconcerned that she was not one of the supermodels who had graced his arm in the past six years, Kayla took in every inch of Andreas’s glorious body, pushing away any nerves, no room for such between them.
The way his gaze roamed down her womanly figure, stopping at her breasts for significant time and then again at the apex of her thighs, said that he approved the view of her in only the matching peach silk panties with lace insets to the bra she’d discarded earlier.
“You still have a weakness for the store with the pink-striped bags, I see,” he drawled in a low, sexy tone.
She shrugged, some devil inside her prompting her to taunt, “Maybe Jacob helped me pick them out yesterday.”
CHAPTER NINE
KAYLA’S SILLY JOKE had a totally unexpected response.
The sound that came out of Andreas was wholly primal, unquestionably angry and matched with fire sparking in his green gaze. He was across the room so fast, she had no time to prepare, before he swept her up into his arms, and yet she felt not a single frisson of fear as he carried her into his bedroom.
He stood beside the giant California-king bed for several tense seconds, his jaw hewn from granite. “You did not buy the lingerie for the actor.”
“Are you so sure?” She hadn’t, but she could have.
She could have bought any manner of lingerie for any number of men in the past six years, and it was just registering with her how much that would have bothered Andreas. Irrational, much?
“What? Do you expect me to live celibate while you are out shopping for your perfect bride?” she demanded.
“No.” He laid her on his bed, yanking the royal blue down duvet back as he did so in a truly impressive feat of coordination. He trailed his forefinger along the waistband of her panties. “So pretty. Not bought yesterday.” Only there was this expression in his eyes that said just maybe he wasn’t as certain as his tone implied.
“I’ve had this set for more than a year, Andreas. You’re the only man who’s ever seen them.” She grabbed his hand and laid it right over her silk-covered mound. “The only one who has ever touched them.”
“Good.” Possessive satisfaction flared in his green gaze, his hand pressing down and sending a thrill of desire and need through her. “I like knowing that more than I can say.”
More than he should say, that was for sure. “You haven’t been celibate for the past six years.”
“Neither have you.”
She didn’t answer. She might as well have been.
One fingertip slipped under the leg band of her panties and brushed ever so gently over her most intimate flesh. “I’ve been too damned busy building our company to sleep with as many women as the tabloids claim, Kayla, you know this.”
She turned away from his too intense look, dipping her head in acknowledgment. So, he hadn’t slept through half the Portland population of beautiful women, but that didn’t make her feel any better about the ones he had taken to his bed.
He pressed between her nether lips, caressing slick flesh and performing a gentle whorl on her clitoris, evoking sensations both deep and intense through the core of her. “Hey, pethi mou. It is you here with me now. It is me here with you. That is what matters.”
She met his emerald gaze, her heart beating so fast, she could feel it in her throat, her breath coming out in short pants. “Is it?”
“It is.” He kissed her, his lips molding to hers with perfect pressure, cutting off words and thoughts.
Somehow, she lost the last piece of disputed lingerie. His briefs disappeared, as well. Both at Andreas’s hands because Kayla was too busy touching skin, kissing lips and trying to press her body up into his. His big, hard sex rubbed against her hip as he drew pleasure from her body in ways it hadn’t experienced in six long years.
Whether it was the fact she was older and her body had changed or that she had gone all that time without knowing the fullness of these feelings, everything was stronger than she remembered. Everywhere his naked body touched hers sent pure jolts of electric ecstasy directly to her core. Her nipples rubbed against the hair on his chiseled chest and it made her wetter, hotter, needier than she’d ever been.
Seconds melted into minutes and Kayla ached with the need to have Andreas inside her.
“Tell me you’re clean,” she demanded with one of her few remaining lucid thoughts.
He shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “What?” he demanded, his voice husky and gruff.
“You’re clean. Tell me.” He’d always been careful. That wouldn’t have changed in six years, not with women who meant nothing to him.
He stared down at her like he was still processing her words, but then his expression cleared. “You know I take care of myself. I have the results of my last tests on my phone.”
“Me too.” They needed to stop. So she could see his, show him hers.
She’d never had sex without that safety check. Not even the first time with Andreas.
No amount of pleasure was worth risking her life.
Only, her body was telling her to forget it, to just keep with the pleasure. Her heart was telling her he would never, ever lie to her or put her at risk, and her brain...it wanted to get on the crazy train and just look later.
But then Andreas jumped off the bed.
She made a very embarrassing sound of need. “Where are you going?”
“To take care of you.” He grabbed his phone and then shoved it at her. “Read it.”
She glanced at the screen, saw the familiar logo from his doctor’s office, while her heart said a very loud and resounding I told you so to her brain. “Okay.”
“You didn’t even open the lab results.” He reached out and traced her jawline. “I mean it. You will take care of yourself. You will confirm this fact.”
“I trust you, Andreas.” And she did, about this. More than she would trust any other man.
“I am glad, but you will read the test results nevertheless. This is nonnegotiable.”
No matter how much he wanted her, and the leaking tip of his fully engorged hard-on told her it was a lot, he was going to make sure she was taken care of in every way.
Like he always did.
She clicked into his app for his doctor’s office and read his latest test results. All good. Just like he’d said. She pulled her own up on the same app since they had the same clinic, if not the same doctor, and showed him hers.
His smile was gorgeous and full of heat.
/>
“I had no doubts.”
“Now, can you please sex me up?” she asked maybe just a little petulantly.
“You want me inside you?”
Was he kidding? “Like yesterday!”
His laughter was rich, warm and oh, so sexy. “Yesterday, you would have thrown your phone at my head if I suggested naked games in my bed.”
“Less talking, more with the touching.” Okay, so he was right, but seriously? Weren’t men the ones who were supposed to have one-track minds?
Finally. He came over her, his hard sex rubbing against her wet, swollen, intimate flesh, drawing a moan of pleasure from her. His skin was silky and hot against hers...his sex so hard, so good. She’d almost forgotten how good this could be. How? And how could she have settled for less?
“I don’t want to use a condom,” he groaned, sounding a little embarrassed, but mostly just really, really turned-on.
Her entire body suffused with desire at his lust-filled words. Kayla’s computerlike brain made the mental calculations. The risk of pregnancy was as low as it could get without birth control.
Still, he needed to know. “I’m not on anything.”
“It is your choice, Kay-love.”
She’d never had sex without a condom. Not even back in the day with him. She’d been on the pill, but he hadn’t wanted any risks.
“Yes.”
“You are certain?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. His expression serious, filled with primal desire.
He did not ask again, but gently pushed inside, rocking his engorged shaft into her inch by inch, joining their bodies in intimate unity and a pleasure so intense, she felt reality fall away.
It shouldn’t make so much difference, the lack of that one small barrier, but it did. They’d never done this before, never been this intimate. She felt the connection to him go all the way through to her soul. In that moment of joining, she knew giving in to her desire had been the biggest mistake of her life because she would never get over this man.
Kayla would never be able to settle for another lover on a permanent basis. She would never love another as she loved Andreas Kostas.
He would always own her heart, as he owned her body now in a way no ever had.
And whether he realized it, or not, she owned his.
Because no way could a connection this deep go only one direction. She didn’t fool herself into believing it was permanent, but it was profound. For both of them.
The sheer rigidity of his jaw, the depths of his green gaze, they said this merging of their bodies was something more for Andreas, as well.
They moved together, slowly at first, the pleasure so intense and different and incredibly special until suddenly she needed more and so did he. His thrusts were hard and fast, her body meeting his with equal fervor and passionate need. They rutted together in animalistic need, while their souls intertwined around them in a spiritual ecstasy Kayla knew she would never experience with another.
Ecstasy spiraled inside, tighter and tighter, her limbs felt tight and loose at the same time, electric sparks buzzing under her skin.
He praised her in a mixture of English and Greek, telling her she was the sexiest woman he’d ever had, the best lover, tightest, best connection, that she felt better than anything he’d ever known. He demanded her pleasure and she gave it to him.
Every bit of pleasure and joy she was capable of.
“You are so beautiful in your pleasure, pethi mou.” Andreas grabbed her hips and tilted her pelvis up, then changed his angle of thrust, doing a twist with his hips when his pelvis met hers.
“I love...what you are doing to me!” she cried, holding back the word she wanted to say, knowing the admission would be unwelcome.
The new sensations sent her into final sexual overload, her body convulsing with a climax of cataclysmic proportions she could no more hold back than stop loving Andreas.
She arched up toward him, her muscles locked in a rictus of delight, her scream loud and long, his name coming out on a wail. “Andreas!”
“That is right, Kay-love. Mine. You are mine.”
His possessive words washed over her, increasing her pleasure, his knowing touch on her body prolonging her climax even as she felt him join her in orgasm. And as she felt the heat of his come inside her for the first time, she had a second climax, her womb contracting, her body’s response to that perfect sensation.
* * *
As Kayla came apart for a second time below him, Andreas shook from the aftershocks of his own mind-blowing climax. He hadn’t just come, he’d had a near out-of-body experience. Nothing like sex was supposed to be. Easy. Stress reducing, but nothing special.
It had never been that simple with Kayla. He’d had other lovers, but not one of them had come close to turning him inside out like she did.
Ecstasy still coursed through him, locking his muscles, making his heart pound, his blood hot in his veins, a one-word refrain repeating over and over again in his brain. Mine.
She was his. She had to see that now. See how this, them together in the same bed, was inevitable.
He finally saw it. It had taken him six years, but Andreas finally got it.
Kayla was meant to be his. Not just his business partner. Not just his family by default because she was his best friend, but the woman who would make his plan to prove his value, his plans for the future, happen.
She made that small postcoital whimpering sound that had always driven him wild. “Andreas.”
Nothing more, just his name, but in that breathy tone? With that sated expression on her beautiful café au lait face? It was all he needed. He would convince her that their futures were entwined.
There was no other choice.
He’d made her see six years ago that they needed to go into business together. Now he would convince her that marriage was the next logical step for them. Because not being in each other’s lives, that was not an option.
Twisting his hips and pressing down, he drew out the dregs of their pleasure, pulling a moan from her, his own sexual satisfaction so deep he had to bite back a growl. “This is right, Kay-love. Admit it.”
She gasped, looking at him with liquid gray eyes.
He kissed her, demanding her body’s agreement with his lips. Her hips cradled him so perfectly, her mouth so soft against his own, the kiss surprisingly passionate considering what they had just done and how they had both come so spectacularly.
But his body was not done, his hard-on never growing soft despite his climax, and within moments of the beginning of their passionate kiss, he was moving his hips again. Taking his time on this round, he drew out their pleasure, rubbing their bodies together even as he pressed in and drew out of her velvet heat in a rhythm as old as time, but that felt like something altogether new, just between them.
Kayla moved against him, her hands on his body, touching him with instinctual knowledge of what would enhance his pleasure. She tugged him closer to her, like she wanted to meld their skin together, amping up his arousal.
Her desire for him was an aphrodisiac all on its own.
This time when she climaxed, her cry was soft and raw, her hands clutching his back, her nails digging into his skin. He reveled in the small pain as he came inside her, knowing that though chance was small, there was a chance they had a made a child together. That knowledge increased his own bliss tenfold, forcing a primal shout of victory from him.
She was his.
He smiled as her eyelids drooped, content to watch her fall asleep. She’d often done this before, napping for a few minutes to an hour after sex. And he spent the time watching her sleep. There was something intimate about this ritual, and personal, something only theirs.
He had not realized how much he had missed watching her in slumber, but something settled inside him as she showed him the ultimate trust as her entire body relaxed into unconsciousness.
He withdrew from her and rolled to the side, laying an unas
hamedly possessive hand over her stomach. The thought of her carrying his child was incredibly appealing. Visions of a little girl with curly black hair and gray eyes like her mama flashed in his mind’s eye.
Kayla only slept about ten minutes, coming awake with a kittenish scrunching of her nose. Her gray gaze caught his in solemnity. “You’re still here.”
“It is my bed.” He had brought her to his room on purpose. He’d been making a statement, but he wasn’t sure she got it.
“You stayed in it. You don’t always. I’m surprised you’re not in the shower already.”
“Much more enjoyable to share the shower.” He winked.
She didn’t smile. Didn’t reply, but simply stared at him with fathomless eyes. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking and he didn’t like it.
Without more discussion, he got up and lifted her out of the bed.
She yelped. “Andreas, what do you think you are doing?”
“Carrying you to the shower.”
“I can walk!”
“I never doubted it.” He nudged the large en suite bathroom’s door open with his shoulder.
The oversize glass-encased shower was nearly as big as the one in his condominium back in Portland, sufficient space enough for two, especially if they didn’t mind getting close. And as far as he was concerned, that was the whole idea. He had always enjoyed washing her body, the intimacy of it something that touched him on a level he would never speak about, but it was especially good after they made love.
He felt like he was taking care of her.
She was so independent, there were few instances she allowed him to do so.
But in the shower, with several showerheads sending heated water cascading over both of them, Kayla allowed him to minister to her body, going soft in a way she so rarely did outside the bedroom.
This time, she stood stiffly at first and he was worried something had changed too much in their dynamic in the intervening six years between being lovers, not lovers and lovers again. She grabbed the luxurious natural loofah that came packaged new in both their bathrooms and put a spicy scented shower gel on it.
But when she went to wash herself, Andreas tugged the loofa from her hand. “Let me.”
