Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: May 2018 Books 1 - 4 - Эбби Грин, Люси Монро, Люси Монро - Страница 18
ОглавлениеTHE CAROUSEL CAME to a complete stop. Somehow, Andreas made sure she came off her horse on the side he stood on and her body pressed against his. “My mother loved the carousel in Portland. She took me often as a child.”
Kayla found herself mesmerized by the look on Andreas’s face as well as the glimpse into his childhood before the Georgas debacle that seemed to define so much of his adult endeavors.
“Are you sure it was your mom who liked the carousel?” she forced words past a suddenly dry throat to tease. “And not a small boy named Andreas who liked riding the horses?”
Andreas’s smile was something so special, Kayla could barely breathe. “It may have been. And now you have another secret of mine to keep.”
She met his gaze, imbuing her own with as much sincerity as she could. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
“Even my intransigence with my family?”
“Even that.”
“Do you want to try to find your family?” he asked.
It wasn’t a new question, not that he’d ever asked it, but she had asked herself that very thing many times. And she still didn’t have an answer, so she remained silent as they left the carousel and started walking again.
“I don’t know. She abandoned me at a truck stop, you know?” Kayla finally broke the silence between them. “Why would a mom do that? I wasn’t a baby. I was three years old. I was never adopted, Andreas.”
“I know that.”
But did he understand what it meant? Not only had Kayla not been a child worthy of a family taking on permanently, but her long-term residency in foster care meant her own mother had never come back for her. “She could have found me, through social services, until I was eighteen. If she’d wanted to.”
“No doubt the woman who gave you birth is a lost cause.” Andreas’s face reflected a ruthlessness few saw, but which she knew didn’t bode well for whoever was on the receiving end of that look. “You might have more family besides her, though.”
“If I had grandparents, aunts or uncles, wouldn’t she have left me with them?”
“I do not think you can make assumptions about that, Kay-love. I have many Kostases and Georgases in Greece and while not one of them lifted a hand to claim me, to help my mother in all the years she worked so hard on her own, you cannot be certain your own mother even told her own relatives about you. They could be decent people.”
Or they could be just like the woman who’d abandoned her. That was what had prevented her from hiring a private detective to find what family Kayla might have, the fear of more rejection. “So could yours.”
“For me, it does not matter,” Andreas dismissed. “I do not want family that rejected the woman who gave everything for me.”
“Do you think they ever regretted it? Your mother’s parents, I mean. They must have, after she died.”
Andreas shook his head, his expression tolerant. “Your heart is so tender for a computer geek.”
“Whatever.” She wasn’t a pushover, but Kayla wasn’t the cynic Andreas was either.
“My mother invited her parents to come to America to meet me, more than once, and they refused. They maintained contact via letters only. However, they wanted to see me after Georgas acknowledged me.”
“You refused them.” Kayla had no doubts on that.
“Naturally.”
“Your father allowed it.” That surprised her.
“He never acknowledged my mother, so why would he want to recognize her family as part of my life?” Andreas asked, giving voice to Kayla’s curiosity.
“But he was open to doing so?” she confirmed.
“He was seeking some way to cross the divide between us.”
And, man, Barnabas had picked the worst possible way to do that particular thing. “Let me guess, it never occurred to him to simply ask you what you wanted.”
“I wanted to return to America and change my name back to Kostas.”
“Neither of which fit his plans to make you his heir.” Barnabas Georgas had never stood a chance, for all his money and power, not when it came to his only child.
“No.”
“What is he doing for an heir now?”
“I have no idea, but there are several first cousins. He’s spoiled for choice, if he weren’t so spoiled to having things his own way.”
She almost said Pot, meet kettle, but knew that would hurt Andreas and that was not her intention. “Are you so sure he only came after you because he wanted an heir? It sounds like the family had that role covered.”
“Not from his loins, and to a man like the Greek business shark Barnabas Georgas, that’s what matters.” The disgust in Andreas’s voice was absolute.
But then his father had wanted Andreas aborted, so for the man to come around later looking for an heir had to have really hit Andreas on the raw.
“I get that you’re convinced, and no way am I going to say your sperm donor sounds like a nice guy.”
“But?” Andreas asked, his mouth a flat line, his tone mocking.
“But you were grieving the loss of the one person you loved in the world when Barnabas Georgas showed up in your life and came stomping in with his ugly, heavy hobnailed boots, prepared to get what he wanted by hook or by crook. He was an arrogant monster, no denial, but I’m not convinced he wasn’t also a man desperate to reconnect to the son he thought lost to him forever.”
“By his own choice.”
“Yes, a choice he probably regretted deeply and not only because he and his wife had never been able to have children together.”
“Why would you believe this?”
“Because in the beginning, he could have squashed you like a bug. He didn’t do that.” And she wasn’t just talking about when Andreas went to Greece, but if Barnabas Georgas had wanted to crush KJ Software before they made a name for themselves, he could have done it.
He’d never even tried. He’d never tried to block Andreas getting into the university he’d wanted to. He’d done nothing to prevent his son’s successes.
Maybe he was playing a long game, hoping Andreas would one day come back and play the Georgas heir, but maybe he just wanted his son to be happy and successful.
Andreas opened his mouth and then shut it again.
“How did his wife treat you?”
“She was surprisingly kind.” Andreas shrugged. “I thought she would hate me, but she didn’t. She didn’t hate my father either.”
“You thought she should.”
“He cheated on her.” Andreas looked baffled. “She treated him with what looked like genuine affection and he was very respectful and warm toward her.”
“Do you think his relationship with your mother was an aberration?”
“It may have been. There was no evidence of other mistresses in the wings, but then he’d done a decent job of keeping my mother a secret, as well.”
They’d reached the area under the bridge again by this point and for the first time in hours, Andreas pulled his phone out. He sent a text.
She gave him a questioning look.
“Calling for our car.”
“The same driver?” she asked, immediate embarrassment at the idea she had to face someone who knew what she’d been doing with him in the car earlier suffusing her with heat.
“I don’t know. It’s a service.”
“Oh.”
“You blush kind of spectacularly.”
Yeah, despite her dusky skin tone, she still managed to show the world when she was embarrassed. “You’re not supposed to notice.”
“I was unaware of that rule.”
She just shook her head. “How is it that people think I’m the one who is socially awkward?”
“Because you do not recognize certain social cues. I ignore them.”
“And that makes it okay?” she demanded. “It’s fine for you, but not for me?”
“No double standard exists between us because I have never considered your quirks as less than and you have always tolerated my impatience with the social niceties.”
“The rest of the world says you are normal, while I am not.”
“The rest of the world does not matter.”
A sleek black sedan pulled up, forestalling any further discussion on the matter. Kayla wasn’t sure she had any more to add anyway. Andreas didn’t care what others thought and she had learned long ago she couldn’t let them matter too much either.
Nevertheless, she was glad to see the driver was unfamiliar.
Andreas closed the privacy screen between the back and the driver as soon as they were settled in their seats. Kayla’s heart sped up, her breath catching as a curl of undeniable anticipation warred with her common sense.
She jerked her head side to side several times. “No, no, no, Andreas. We are not doing that again.”
“Doing what?” he asked, devilish amusement sparkling in his green gaze.
Her fingers scrabbled for her headphones that were not there, nothing to cut out the rest of the world. Nothing to help her ignore Andreas and the maelstrom of emotions he evoked inside her. “You do not pull off innocent. At all.”
“That is because I left innocent behind a long time ago.”
She would have answered, in wholehearted agreement, but masculine lips pressed firmly against hers. The kiss didn’t shock her this time. Not even a little. She knew it was coming. Had known it was coming since getting out of the car before crossing the bridge.
Even without the surprise factor, it still annihilated her senses.
Despite her verbal protests, she didn’t fight the sensations roaring through her. There was simply no point. Whatever the rational part of her brain told her, she knew the truth deep in her soul. Kayla wanted this kiss. This moment. This feeling.
She wanted Andreas.
All rational argument against intimacy with him went up in the conflagration of desire a single touch of his mouth to her elicited.
She let herself experience it all, every amazing spark of sexual energy, each tiny zing of sensual delight. She had no idea how much of this physical intimacy she and Andreas would have...how much was on offer, much less how much she could ultimately allow herself.
But she was going to revel in every moment between them, because she knew the frozen chill of loneliness while standing beside him in the same room all too well. She knew what years of want, need, aching unfulfilled desire felt like.
She knew the deep, searing pain of unrequited love, of frustrated longing, of lust that went unsatiated so long, she almost forgot what true sexual contentment felt like.
Kayla knew what it was to hunger. She’d spent her lifetime wishing for things just out of reach, grieving losses she’d never had any control over.
In this moment she would embrace the getting, no matter how temporary.
This time, she didn’t just hold on to him while they kissed, she explored the hard planes of his body, both remembering and rediscovering him in the most visceral of ways. Her hands skimmed over Andreas, mapping every bulging muscle, touching places she knew caused him extra pleasure. Triumph flared through her when his breath caught, his kiss growing more fervent, proving her touch was true, her memories still accurate, that she, Kayla Jones, was capable of turning this man—the only man who mattered to her—on.
When she curled her hand around his hard sex, his response was electric. Andreas’s big body went rigid, his groan deep and loud.
He slid his lips from hers, along her jaw. “Careful, pethi mou. We will never make it to our next tourist attraction if you keep doing that.”
“If you gave the driver any address but our hotel, Andreas Kostas—” she paused, her hand tightening on its cloth-covered prize, letting the seriousness of her words sink in “—I am going to infect every single one of your connected devices with an irreparable virus.”
It wasn’t an idle or paltry threat. She’d connected his smartphone to his tablet, which was now also linked to his work system as well as the system that controlled his home’s heating, lights, etc., as well as his alarm systems. No one else could have done it, but Kayla could bring Andreas’s life to a standstill.
His deep, sexy chuckle said despite the severity of her threat, Andreas was not worried.
Pulling back, she glared up at him. “You think I’m joking?”
“Oh, no, Kay-love. I am certain you would follow through.” He trapped her hand where it was, even though her body was straining back, his gorgeous eyes glittering with green fire. “I have never enjoyed another woman’s hands on me as much as yours.”
“Do not try to sweet-talk me, Kostas. I’m not in the mood for your teasing.”
“I see that.” He thrust against her hand, the hard bulge under her hand more a temptation than he could possibly know.
“So?”
“Are you demanding we go back to the hotel and make love?” he asked, no mockery or even justifiable triumph in his tone, just a good dose of sexual heat.
She glared, her own frustration boiling near the surface, realizing he was calling the bluff of all her earlier denials, demanding she spell it out for him. “Are you saying you would rather do something else?”
“No.” He was suddenly very serious. “There is nothing I want more.”
“And the tourist attraction?”
“A joke.”
“In poor taste.” And maybe she was a teensy, tiny bit defensive.
“But I like when you get testy.”
“You can be really annoying, Dre.”
His grin was huge and very sexy, a testament to the fact he knew he had won. “I am very lucky you put up with me.”
“You are, not that I think you really believe that.”
“I do, though.” He cupped her face, his thumb brushing along her cheekbone. “I know how very lucky I am to have you in my life. I always have done.”
“You don’t make any sense.” She did not like when he talked in riddles.
“Because we do not see the world the same way.”
No question. For all that they’d both suffered loss and pain, Andreas had always had more of a safety net. He just didn’t realize it.
And that net allowed him to see the world differently than she did. Hence his ability to say that he saw her as necessary to his life, even as he was making plans for one in which she would by necessity play a smaller and smaller part.
She wasn’t thinking about the future right now, though. Kayla was with the one man who had ever been able to give her everything she needed on an intimate level, most likely for the last time with any level of privacy. When they got back to Portland, he had venture capital worlds to conquer, a bride to find—with or without a matchmaker—and Kayla hopefully would still have KJ Software and the shelter she funded.
Not all she wanted, or even needed, but what she’d learned she could have.
Besides, she was on vacation, darn it. She was going to go home with memories. Memories that just might have to last her a lifetime.
“So, back to the hotel?” she asked.
“Yes, pethi mou. Back to the hotel, where I will ravish your body until you are ready to accept the only terms that make sense for our future.”
If he thought great sex, even the best sex they’d ever had, was going to convince her to walk away from KJ Software and take the leap into venture capital investment, he was living in Dreamland.
Now that the decision to return to the hotel had been put out in the open, the fact they were going to make love was a given, there was a different quality to his kisses.
They turned languid and slow, but no less sexually devastating, no less emotionally catastrophic. His lips possessed hers, demanded she returned in kind. His tongue tasted, teased her into tasting.
And what he tasted like was hers, for that moment anyway.
They arrived at the hotel sooner than she expected, but not as quickly as she needed. She wanted skin-on-skin contact. She’d been without his touch for too long. She wanted to touch him without hindrance, craved his hands on her body with nothing in the way, as well.
But when they reached their suite, he did not immediately take her into his arms. Instead, he stared at her with those deep, fathomless green eyes for long seconds.
“What?” she demanded.
“I am thinking how beautiful you are.”
She made an inelegant sound of disbelief. “So beautiful you did not touch me for six years.”
“I explained that.”
“And now suddenly, you’re not worried about losing me if you take me to bed again?” What was the matter with her?
Was she trying to talk him out of it now that she’d decided she wanted the same thing he did? But he wasn’t making sense. And she hated it when things didn’t make sense, especially Andreas.
“Circumstances change.”
Right. He was selling the company. She wasn’t going to be his very minor partner any longer. Or he was hoping that by sexing her up he’d convince her to move on from KJ Software with him. Either way, the situation balanced in his business-literal brain.
She shrugged off her jacket, her breath catching at the way his eyes zeroed in on her hard peaks as they strained against her tank top. Tight and aching for another kind of stimulation, her nipples tingled under his hot gaze. She had always loved the way he looked at her in this mood, the way his gaze on her body could be almost a tactile sensation.
It wasn’t enough, though. Not nearly enough. She wanted more; she wanted real touch and lots of it.
Putting her hands on the hem of her tank top, she gave him a flirtatious look, knowing just what the combination would do to Mr. Control. “Like what you see, Andreas?”
“You know I do.” His voice came out more growl than billionaire-businessman tone.
Ooh, she liked it when that happened.
“How much?” she prodded, tugging up a little on the top, showing just a small line of skin above her waistband, teasing him...teasing herself.
Finesse and control disappearing in a husky breath, Andreas ripped his own shirt off, his slacks going next with swift, almost jerky, movements, revealing his hard sex barely contained by the black briefs he still wore. “This much.”
She gasped, her reaction to his body visceral and intense. She knew he kept in shape with daily workouts and martial arts, but his broad shoulders layered with lean muscle, sculpted chest and eight-pack abs were totally droolworthy. He’d always looked more like a warrior than a corporate shark to her.
Only six years ago, his body had been that of a young man, but he’d filled out more, his body nothing less than awe inspiring now.
“I have always gotten off on the way you look at me, Kay-love.” Andreas’s tone was every 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.”
