Isn't It Bromantic (Bromance Book Club #4) by Lyssa Kay Adams

            “Why didn’t you ever tell me you could write like this?”

            “I don’t know.”

            She rubbed a circle over his heart. “That soft part of you, the one that cries at animal shows and weddings, the one that studies poetry and kisses chickens . . . you’ve poured all of it into a story that made me cry and cheer and want to kiss you until you can’t breathe.”

            He gulped again. “I like the kissing part of that.”

            She obliged. She straddled his lap, and their mouths met in a tangle of wild and unrestrained longing. It was a sloppy kiss, tender and fierce at once, just like her. This was the moment he’d read about so many times, but nothing he wrote in his own book would ever come close to capturing how this felt. The completeness of handing your whole heart to someone who gave hers back in return.

            Vlad gripped her head and brought them brow to brow. “ ‘My voice that is for you, the languid one and gentle . . .’ ”

            She choked on an emotional noise, and her voice broke as she picked up the verse for “The Night,” an ardent declaration about the burning fire of love, the poetry of passion, the rivers that ebb and flow between two lovers. Vlad stroked her velvet mouth with his tongue before pulling back and panting the final lines, written, it seemed, for them alone. “ ‘My friend, my sweetest friend, I love—’ ”

            But his throat clogged with a rising sob of joy, cutting off his voice. Elena kissed his nose, gently, sweetly, and took over for him, completing the promise with a fervent whisper against his lips. “ ‘I love . . . I’m yours . . . I’m yours.’ ”





Promise Me





“Tony, you have to eat something.”

            He held the bandage at his side, where just a week ago, a Nazi bullet had torn a hole through him. He shoved the plate away with his other hand and stood. It had been a week since the rescue. A week since he’d been shot. A week since his last fleeting image of Anna standing above him, crying and screaming his name, before her blood splattered his face. And then the world went black.

            Two days ago, the light returned when he’d woken up on this hospital ship headed for the U.S. with Jack sitting next to his bunk, an agonized and regretful look on his face. He hadn’t left Tony alone since. As if they were bonded somehow in shared grief.

            “You’re not going to heal if you don’t eat,” Jack said, following with Tony’s untouched tray. “I’m trying to help you.”

            “I don’t want your goddamned help.” He whipped around and knocked the tray from Jack’s hands. Chipped beef and applesauce flew in every direction. Tony ignored the stab of pain in his side and grabbed Jack by the lapels of his hospital robe. “You were supposed to save her! Where the hell were you?”

            “Do you honestly think I’m not as broken up about this as you are?”

            “I don’t care what you feel.”

            “I’m the reason she’s gone. She saved my life, and I couldn’t save hers. I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I loved her as much you did, Tony.”

            The sound of a high-pitched gasp brought them apart. A Red Cross nurse stood with her hand to her mouth, eyes wide and disbelieving. She took a tentative step toward them, blinked rapidly, and then spun around to run in the other direction.

            “What the hell was that?” Jack asked, bending to pick up the tray Tony had knocked from his hands. “She looked at us like she’d seen a ghost.”

            Tony crouched. “We’ve all seen ghosts in this war.”

            An orderly came by with a mop and a bucket. Tony held his side as he stood and reached for the mop. “Let me do it. It’s my mess.”

            “No, sir,” the young man said. “This is my job. Yours is to get better. You go on and sit down. Both of you.”

            Tony hesitated but finally held out a hand to help Jack to his feet.

            Another feminine gasp interrupted. They turned in unison. A woman stood alone by the small door, silhouetted against the light. A bandage was wrapped around the crown of her head.

            She stepped forward on shaky steps.