And there.
Tessa came on a sigh, felt his body jerk. And then he held her close, cradling her to him. Her eyes stayed shut. Keeping his image far from her mind.
“TESSA?” GABE STUDIED HER peaceful smile, trying to figure out what part of the movie he had missed.
“Ssshhhhhh,” she answered in a sleepy voice. “No names. Two strangers.”
What the hell? Okay, he’d either traumatized her or screwed her into a break with reality, neither of which seemed viable.
“Tess?”
“No names,” she muttered.
Nope, not that either, Gabe. “Miss?” he asked, trying to come up with some anonymous yet personal mode of address.
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
She smiled again. “I’m lovely. I feel lovely.”
That didn’t sound bad. “You’re not hurt?”
“I think I’m going to hurt in the morning,” she said, her eyes still closed, and he wished that she’d open them, look at him, so that he would know she was okay. “Can we do that again?” she asked, her voice dreamy.
“I don’t know,” stated Gabe, the first and only time in his life that he’d ever said no to a naked female. And Tessa was marvelously naked. Her skin was smooth, and lightly tanned, like pale scotch on a summer’s night. Her breasts were firm, exactly fitting…
No, no, no…
He didn’t need to be thinking about Tessa’s firm breasts with nipples the color of…
Gabe shook his head.
“Let’s do it again,” she repeated, sending a new rush of blood to his cock.
“I can’t,” he lied.
“You must,” she ordered, and he heard it again, that trace of Napoleon-like command in her voice. Where the hell had that come from?
“This is a bad idea, Te—miss,” he said, but his no-conscience hard-on was ready and waiting, not really caring about personal boundaries or morning-after complications. And Gabe, at his heart, was merely a man.
“You must,” she said.
Gabe, the weak-hearted coward that he was, obeyed.
THEY MADE LOVE another three times during the night because Tessa had four lost years to make up for. Four times in all, once for each year of her life that she’d given up. Her dark stranger never asked her questions again, words were rarely used at all—a fact that she was grateful for.
She wasn’t going to dwell on who was next to her, wasn’t going to delve into that never-never land where man dreams were supposed to come true but they instead ended up tattooed in permanent red ink. Instead she was going to focus on this pleasure, this sex, this dark stranger who could make her body ache. As long as she didn’t think about who he was, her heart—and her own Tessa dreams—were safe.
Finally, when the morning sun was creeping through the window, she fell asleep, curled up next to him, feeling the dusting of chest hair tickling her back, feeling his flaccid sex settling comfortably between her thighs, feeling his lips soft against her neck.
Tessa smiled and fell into a sated, dreamless sleep.
THE PHONE RANG, hellishly loud, and Gabe reached out a hand, searching for it.
“Did you see her naked yet?”
Instantly Gabe was wide-awake. The word naked did that to a guilty man.
“What?” he asked, focusing on Sean’s voice, keeping his attentions far away from the trim, tight body that was currently curled into his Johnson as if she owned it. Which she did.
Gabe sprang out of bed.
“Did you see her naked yet?” Sean repeated. “Daniel put money on one night, but I knew you were too honorable to do anything more than sneak a long look when she came out of the shower. So? Listen, bro, I could use the inside track on this one. The Mets’ losing streak is killing my discretionary income, and I was counting on something to bail me out. Any fever looks last night?”
“What’s a fever look?” asked Gabe, already knowing the answer.
“I know you don’t get ’em like I do, but it’s the sloe-eyed thing that women do when they want to test out your equipment. So…Tessa giving you the sloe-eyes?”
Gabe turned his back to the bed, not wanting to know if Tessa was giving him the sloe-eyes, at least not while he was on the phone with his brother. “Nothing. I went to a party last night. Fell asleep. Get your mind out of the gutter.” He heard a soft moan, and his mind, still in the gutter, turned to see the naked female in his bed.
The tight, trim body stirred under the covers, a tousled head of honey-brown hair starting to emerge. Gabe pushed her head back down before she forgot she was wearing no clothes.
“Sucks,” answered Sean, master of the crude yet precisely effective come-back. “Better luck next—”
“What do you want?” interrupted Gabe, searching for his shorts and finding them hung over the lamp. While pulling them on, he kept one eye glued to the dark head, waiting for signs of life—or anger, whichever came first.
“I wanted to talk to you about the building permit for the renovations….”
One green eye opened, widened in horror, nothing even close to sloe-eyed fever.
“’Bye, Sean. We’ll talk later,” Gabe finished, quickly slamming down the phone.
Tessa bolted upright, clutching the blanket like a lifeline.
“Tessa?” he asked carefully, fully prepared for a five-alarm tongue-lashing on the proper respect for personal boundaries.
Gradually the alarm in her eyes dimmed.
“I’m fine,” she answered, dodging his gaze.
Gabe heaved a glorious sigh of relief and began pulling on his jeans. He had screwed up royally last night, he knew it, but this moment of forgiveness—nay, acceptance—really did his heart good. “I can bunk with Daniel if you want—if it’ll make you feel better.”
It was a generous, unselfish offer, designed to give her some level of comfort and security. An assurance that as tempting as her bones were, Gabe had the necessary self-control to modify his behavior and not jump them—again.
She licked her lips, a nervous gesture, which really shouldn’t have turned him on, but did anyway.
“I’m not kicking you out of your own apartment,” she answered, immediately sensing the nobleness of his offer. “There’s lots of room here.”
