“Okay, so you’re not married. Are you involved in a serious relationship?”
She set the plate in front of him and gave him a pointed look. “Is there a reason for these questions?”
He smiled. Because she asked he might as well go ahead and tell her. She was mature enough to handle it. “Yes, there’s a reason. When I get around to kissing you I’ll feel better knowing your mouth doesn’t belong to any other man. Legally or otherwise.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she opened her mouth, probably to tell him just where he could take his own mouth—legally or otherwise—but instead of saying anything right then, she just tightened her lips together.
He chuckled. “Tightening those lips shut won’t keep me from prying them apart for a kiss if that’s what I want to do, Chloe.”
Chloe folded her arms across her chest. “Is there a reason for this madness?”
“Is that what this is? Madness?” he asked as he began eating.
She lifted her chin and glared at him. “You got another name for it?”
“What about hunger?”
She frowned. “Hunger?”
“Yes, hunger of a sexual nature. I need to get you out my system and I figured I’ll start by kissing you to see if that will work.”
Chloe dropped her hands by her side. Not believing he’d said such a thing. And not believing her heart was thumping rapidly in her chest at the thought of him making good on his threat. “You’re nothing like Daren.”
He raised a dark brow. “Who’s Daren?”
“The last guy I was involved with.”
Ramsey ignored the twinge of jealousy that invaded his gut. “Is not being like Daren good or bad?”
She shrugged. “Not sure. Although, I think it would have been nice if he would have had even a fraction of that hunger thing.”
He immediately caught on to what she’d insinuated. “I can’t imagine any man hanging around you for long without wanting to gobble you alive. He must have been a real idiot.”
Chloe kept herself from smiling and refused to admit she’d thought the same thing. “He had his own ideas about what down to earth lovemaking was about. He suggested that we participate in a threesome.”
Ramsey frowned. He could handle the fact that her ex-boyfriend hadn’t had a passionate bone in his body, but the thought that the man had actually wanted to share her with someone else was as demented as it could get. No man in his right mind would share her.
“Then he wasn’t just an idiot,” Ramsey spoke up to say. “He was a crazy idiot. Any man who could get it into his mind to share you evidently doesn’t have the brain he was born with. There’s no way I would consider doing such a thing. I would want you all to myself.”
His gaze roamed over her. “It would be me and me alone who would leave a satisfied smile on your lips, Chloe.”
Chloe felt a tightening in her stomach as his gaze slowly swept over her, lingering in certain places and bestowing a visual caress in others. And his deep seductive voice was stirring all kinds of sensations to life inside her.
“How long were you with this guy?”
She wondered why he wanted to know. “A year.”
“And how long have the two of you been apart?”
Chloe wasn’t sure why he wanted to know that, either. Why she’d even shared anything with him about Daren in the first place was a mystery to her. But she had and evidently he was curious. “Two years. Now if you will excuse me I’m about to tackle the dishes.”
Ramsey watched her walk off over to the sink and, since she was doing her best to ignore him, he dug into his meal. Not surprisingly, everything was delicious and for the first time in a long while, he was enjoying his food. He was also enjoying watching Chloe while he ate. If she only knew all the things that were running through his mind while chewing on a piece of bacon and swallowing his toast.
She refused to look over at him which was probably a good thing. Instead she was trying to keep busy and continued to ignore him in the process. By the time he had finished breakfast and drained the last of his coffee, she had stacked all the dishes on the counter to load into the huge dishwasher. She wiped down the countertops until they gleamed.
Getting up from the table he crossed the kitchen to the sink to place his plate and cup in the sudsy water. And when he turned toward her she made a quick move to get out of his way. She wasn’t fast enough and he reached out and took hold of her hand.
A shiver immediately rushed down Chloe’s spine and she sucked in a sharp breath the instant Ramsey touched her. She tilted her head and looked up at him. He was standing in front of her and his gaze, she noticed, was intense as ever and centered directly on her lips. Then his eyes moved slowly up her face to her eyes. He smiled and then slid his gaze back down to her lips again.
She knew at that moment he was about to make good on his threat to kiss her. Heat began formulating at the center of her thighs, and the way he was staring at her lips made her hot. Wet. Then something within her began to ache. It was a hollowed emptiness she just realized was there. He moved a step closer and his scent inflamed everything within her, pulling her into the depths of his masculinity, swirling her about and drawing her under into his sensual spell.
She studied him, became enmeshed in the starkly strong features of his face. He was a very handsome man, so much so that her senses were betraying her, refusing to let her do the right thing and demand he remove his hand from hers. Instead she felt herself easing toward him at the same time he shifted his body even closer to hers.
Chloe found herself pinned between him and the counter, felt the hardness of his erection come to rest between her thighs like it had every right to be there. For the first time in her life she felt totally in sync with a man, fully aware of who he was and what he could do. And the thought of what he could do, what he would do sent an intense shiver up her spine. It made her anxious to the point where she felt her nerves beginning to quiver. She swallowed deeply and when that didn’t help her she took her tongue and swiped it across her lower lip.
Not a good move.
She looked into his face and saw the effect doing such a thing had on him. By no means was she trying to encourage him and when she saw heat flare in his eyes, she knew something elementally male was taking place and he had no intention of fighting it.
He leaned forward and before she could catch her next breath, he bent his head and captured her lips.
Five
Ramsey had told Chloe this wasn’t madness, but at that moment he knew that quite possibly it was worse. There was no way to explain why the moment his lips touched hers he’d felt something he couldn’t name or define slid up his spine. And her taste—rich, honeyed and sweet—drove him to stroke his tongue all over her mouth, sample her everywhere, taste her, and with a greed that made him groan. And when he released his hold on her wrist to place his hands at the center of her back, he shifted positions as fire spread through him.
Energy he didn’t think he had, especially after a sleepless night, raced through him, gripped him hard, made his erection swell that much more. He wanted to think this was ludicrous, but he knew this was as sexual as it could get, as he took her mouth in a hot and urgent kind of way. He was determined to make her feel all the things he was feeling at that moment. And when she took hold of his tongue, he knew he’d succeeded.
The hands at her back became possessive, they lowered to cup her backside and she moaned at the same time she moved against him. They were chest to breast, hip to thigh, with mouths locked tight and