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

            Years of wanting, wondering, longing collided with a reality that exceeded all fantasy. His hands cradled her. His arms held her. His mouth made love to her. There was a sweetness to his passion, a tenderness in his brute strength. He kissed with an innocence that spoke of purity but a gentle proficiency that suggested experience, and she did not want to think about that.

            He manipulated the angle of her mouth to feast on what remained of her senses as she pressed into him, the front of her pelvis brushing against the bulge of his arousal. He made a noise that was part human, part animal. With a gasp, she wrenched her mouth away to gulp in oxygen, tilting her head back, eyes closed. Vlad trailed his lips down her jaw, her chin, her throat. Her fingers dug into his scalp as he tasted the delicate skin, breathed in her scent, nuzzled the tender pulse point that raced ever faster with every flick of his tongue.

            “Vlad . . .”

            He answered her whispered plea with a slow slide of his hand down her side, pausing as if to memorize every inch, every dip and curve. Then his fingers fumbled with the hem of her shirt, and her breath became lodged in her lungs as his fingers met her skin and began a journey back up her body.

            His fingertips brushed the underswell of her breast for a fraction of a second before his palm covered the lacy fabric standing between his exploration and the taut nub of her nipple.

            She gasped his name, arched into his touch.

            He groaned and jerked away from her. Vlad planted his hands on the wall on either side of her body and dropped his head between his shoulders. Defeated. Deflated.

            “Vlad?”

            He finally backed up, limping. “I can’t do this, Elena.”

            Elena tugged down on her shirt. “Do what?”

            “Whatever this is. For years, you’ve wanted nothing to do with me. You tell me you want to go back to Russia, to leave me, but then you come here and suddenly you’re hugging me and looking at me naked and telling me I’m beautiful and kissing me. Do you know what I’ve had to do to move on from you?” He smacked the center of his chest. “What I’ve had to do to move on from you in here? And now here you are, and I have no idea what is going on with us.”

            “I—”

            He grabbed her shoulders. “What the hell is going on with us?”

            “I don’t know,” she whispered.

            He let her go. “I need you to figure it out. Because I’m not a machine. You either want me or you don’t. Just please, God, make up your mind.”

            Elena peeled her body from the wall. “And what about you? When are you ever going to make up your mind?”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “You can’t ignore someone for almost six years and then show up out of the blue to say you want a real marriage now.”

            “Ignore you?” He slapped one hand into the other palm. “I married you. I vowed before my family, before our church, to marry you and protect you, and that meant something to me.”

            “No, it didn’t.”

            “Wh-what?”

            Her hands balled into fists. “I heard you!”

            “Heard me when?”

            “With your father. The night of the wedding. I heard you. I know the truth, Vlad. I’ve always known the truth. You proposed out of a sense of obligation, not love or passion. You proposed because your mother told you it was the right thing to do.”

            In her mind, she was a cartoon character with her legs spinning in the air as she tried to grab the words back. But it was too late.

            He winced. Deeply, until lines formed around his eyes. “No. That’s not . . . Elena, you misunderstood.”

            “Did I? You didn’t even kiss me after you proposed.”

            “You didn’t kiss me either!”

            “Because I had no idea if you wanted me to.” Her voice came out a whimper, and she hated it, the weakness of it.

            “I can’t believe this,” Vlad breathed. “Why . . . why didn’t you say something?”