Saved By The Greek Doctor (Greek Gods #3) - Holly Rayner Page 0,39

some extra pocket money. Once I got old enough to pay for my meals rather than getting paid to wash dishes, I started coming here once a week. At least. They make the best moussaka in the region.”

The moussaka we’d made together was still fresh in my memory, though, and I leaned forward, grabbed an olive from the bowl in front of us, and popped it into my mouth. “We’ll see about that,” I said, grinning and chewing and speaking all at the same time.

The moussaka, it turned out, was extremely good. But it wasn’t as good as what we’d made on the island. In my humble opinion.

When I told Nikos so, he just laughed and shook his head.

“That’s because I stole their recipe,” he said in an exaggerated whisper, his eyes going huge. “And then improved on it with some of my mother’s ideas.”

I laughed loud and long at that, partially because I’d had so much wine… but also because it was just so endearing. Nikos was, by far, one of the most secretive people I’d ever met, and I’d seen him working hard to keep some of those secrets behind closed doors in our time together. I’d seen him shutting an entire part of himself off from me—either to protect himself, or to protect me. I had no idea what that part of him was, or why he was keeping it so hidden.

But I was overjoyed that he was sharing so much with me now. It was a far cry from the man who had barely been able to stand talking about who he was when I first came to the island.

And to my surprise, when I stopped laughing and looked at him again, I saw Nikos staring at me with wonder, as if I was something he’d never expected—and as if he was giving himself permission to actually accept it, rather than fighting it off. The wall I generally saw behind his eyes, which kept his inner thoughts so private, was somehow gone.

And those eyes were clear for the first time since I’d met him.

I’d barely had the thought when he was suddenly leaning forward, cupping my face in his big, warm hands and claiming my mouth, his own so soft and gentle and velvety that I actually gasped into it, both from surprise and from the red-hot desire that went shooting through my body at his touch.

I reached up, threaded my fingers through his hair, and kissed him back for all I was worth, putting every ounce of what I’d felt building over the week into that kiss and telling him without any words whatsoever that whatever he was feeling, I was feeling it, too.

And at that, one of his hands reached around to the back of my head and pulled me closer to him, tipping my head so that he could part my lips with his tongue and delve into my mouth, the kiss becoming suddenly so deep and passionate that I had the thought that I was going to lose myself into it. Actually sink into that warm, dark spot where this kiss—between the two of us—was the only thing that mattered, the only thing that existed.

And I was going to let myself go there. I was going to shut out the rest of the world and focus only on him, and only on this moment. Because it was so beautiful, so unexpected, that I never, ever wanted it to end.

Of course it did end, as all things do, when he pulled back a moment later, his eyes full of questions, his face full of doubt.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” he whispered.

But instead of letting him pull away again, instead of letting him take his emotions and shove them behind that mask again, instead of letting him shut down the way he’d been doing for the entire week, I reached out, grabbed the front of his shirt, and yanked him back toward me, sealing my lips to his one more time. This time the kiss was intense and urgent, not at all gentle. All teeth and bite. All demands.

When I pulled back, I kept him there, my eyes intense on his, my face, I was sure, showing exactly what I was feeling.

“I’m not going to let you disappear on me again,” I told him firmly. “You’ve been doing it all week. I can see the fight going on inside of you, and I want to know what it is. Tonight might be my last night