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