Modern Romance Collection: May 2018 Books 1 - 4. Эбби Грин

bit as deep and smoldering as his green gaze.

      “I’m sure you’ve had plenty of women look at you the same way.”

      “No.” His denial was too sincere for her to disbelieve him. “No one has ever looked at me with the same intense desire, not like you. Your eyes make me burn.”

      “Good.”

      “Oh, yes, very.”

      She pulled her tank top a little farther up, loving the feel of his eyes on her, so intimate, so knowing, almost as good as a touch, as they followed the hem of her top. “It’s the same for me.”

      “I know.” His hands curled at his sides, like he wanted to reach out and grab her, but was stopping himself.

      “Arrogant.” She could barely get the single word past her suddenly tight throat.

      “The truth is not arrogance.”

      Maybe not. She didn’t have the breath or the focus to argue with him regardless.

      Only one thing was on her mind right now, and it wasn’t semantics. She removed her top, slowly, because she knew it would drive him crazy the longer she took.

      His growl was very satisfying. “No one could appreciate your beauty as much as I do.”

      “Are you saying I am only sexy to you?” She paused with her hands behind her back on the clasp of her bra, again teasing him with what was to come, taunting him with her words and the prospect she might stop undressing.

      “No,” he said forcefully. “I am saying that chemistry plays a part here, Kayla. You understand chemical reactions.”

      “Yes.” She unclasped her bra and knew by the flaring of his nostrils he noticed the sound, but she didn’t let the lingerie fall away. “I do.”

      He took a step toward her, but stopped, his pupils already blown with passion, his jaw clenched. “What you might have with another man would be a reaction, what we have is a nuclear explosion.”

      She could not deny it. She’d always believed that was because she loved him. He thought it was because they had some kind of extra chemical attraction. She almost shook her head at him, but right now she really didn’t care why they were so explosive together. All that really mattered was that they were.

      “Oh, yes,” she said as she let her bra fall away from her generous curves.

      Andreas swore in Greek before reaching out to cup her breasts, his fingers brushing over her nipples with unerring accuracy, making her gasp and shudder. “Your body was made for mine.”

      She had no answer for a claim that he had made before and to her had always sounded more permanent than she knew he meant it to. Back then she’d been naive and believed the implications, now she had the benefit of a learned past to teach her his words were nothing but impassioned sex talk.

      He leaned down and nibbled along her ear, making Kayla shiver with desire. “My sweet, pethi mou, what do I have to do to get you take off those too-damn-sexy slacks that cling to your butt like a second skin?”

      “You want me to take these off?” she forced herself to tease in a voice made breathy with desire. Despite wanting to make love with Andreas more than she wanted to keep breathing in the moment, Kayla could not afford to give in too easily, on anything.

      Andreas never appreciated anything he got too easily, and she was determined he would remember this, their last time together, as something special. She would be the one who got away, the one he never forgot.

      Because she was never going to forget him.

      “I do.” He tugged at her earlobe with his teeth, sending all sorts of sexy messages along her nerve endings.

      “You’ve already taken off your slacks...” She paused to take a much-needed breath. “I suppose...” She tried again, “I suppose it’s only fair.”

      “You are a fair person,” he praised as he pinched her nipples just enough to bring pleasure, rolling them between thumbs and forefingers.

      “I try to be.”

      He kissed along her neck. “You have always helped me with my lack in that area.”

      She nodded. Andreas had once told her that he considered Kayla his backup conscience. Maybe she should have taken heed he considered he needed one. She might not have been so blindsided by the events of the past two days.

      She unbuttoned and unzipped, but didn’t take it any further, too enamored by the sensations this buildup to pleasure was giving her. And maybe just a little too breathless. “You sure this is what you want?”

      “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