knows?”
She met his eyes, and Gabe felt a stirring in his gut, a stirring of blood that would only mean trouble, especially for her. “Did you hate last night?” she asked.
Here it was, nearly one in the morning, and Tessa wanted to talk. Now.
Outside, the late-night streets were quiet and still. Inside, Gabe felt as though there were an impending nuclear explosion. Okay, fine, she wanted to talk? He would talk. “It’s biologically impossible for a man to hate or regret sex. Everything else is within the realm of possibility. But sex? No.”
“Oh,” she said and went back to wiping the counter, which even a moron could see was already spotless.
So the time for talking was now over. Gabe should feel happy. She could work. He could work, so he scanned over the inventory behind the three bars, counting stock for the next day, but the numbers started running together in his head.
Finally he stopped counting. “What does ‘oh’ mean?”
“Just ‘oh.’”
She sounded miffed, slightly defensive and hurt. The miffed he could handle, the defensive was completely normal, but the hurt was like a hot poker against his heart. So the time for talking was not over. “Tessa?”
She put down her rag. “I liked it,” she said, which came out like a confession rather than a compliment.
Gabe chose to ignore that important point and smiled. “I know.”
“At least once I got to the part where I could separate you from the other man.”
Gabe blinked. “What other man?”
She worked her mouth, struggling to explain, but eventually she got there. “You know, the not-you other man. Anyway, once I got over that hump, figuratively speaking, it was great. I didn’t know it could be like that.”
This time she gave him a half smile. Almost shy. And right then, it didn’t matter if it was one in the morning and he’d had three hours of sleep. Right at the moment Gabe could have scaled the George Washington Bridge single-handedly.
“Gabe?”
“What?” he asked, starting to like this conversation. Gabe wasn’t nearly the horndog that Sean was. Gabe worked too hard and didn’t worry a lot about sex. There was usually a willing female when his body got too tense. Yet this time it was Tessa and things were different. Last night had been different. He’d wanted to please her, wanted to make her scream.
Gabe had never thought about lust that way, never felt the hard kick inside him. But last night some switch had flipped on inside him, and now that he had gotten used to the sudden atomic surges in his cock, gotten used to the low-grade hum in his brain, he wasn’t ready to flip the switch back off again.
Weakling.
“Could we keep pretending?” Tessa asked.
“Pretending what?” he asked, wondering what pretending had to do with sex.
She waved a hand, searching for words. “Pretending that you’re…somebody else. For instance, a mysterious stranger who I don’t know and who never tells me his name.”
Ah, the male ego. Such a powerful force, so easily annihilated. Gabe looked at her, wondering what strategic move he’d done wrong last night, because it was obvious that while he’d been thinking screaming, she’d been thinking somebody else.
“I’m not sure I like that game.” Which was more polite than Hell, no.
“You liked it fine last night,” she reminded him.
“I didn’t know that’s the game we were playing last night. Hell, Tessa, I didn’t even know we were playing a game. I don’t know. I don’t think you’re ready. It’s only been four years—” Jeez “—you need to ease back into things. You shouldn’t have to pretend,” he said. Especially with me, he thought, keeping quiet on that one.
Her cheeks were flushed, not with anger but embarrassment, and Gabe couldn’t figure out why this game thing was so important to her, but he was willing to try and understand. For Tessa, he would trudge onward to comprehend the great unknown that was the female brain.
“It’s difficult for me because we’re friends, and I don’t want to mess with that, but I liked last night. I really liked last night and I think if I thought of you as someone else other than you—my friend—then it’d be easier. Does that make sense?”
Gabe considered it. “No.”
She frowned in frustration and then tried again. “A healthy fantasy life should be part of every woman’s innate sexuality,” she told him, sounding like something on a TV talk show. Maybe that’s where this was coming from? Maybe Tessa had decided to start living again and she thought Gabe was safe.
That should have been a comforting thought.
Gabe was uncomforted.
He leaned one hip against the bar, not sure what to say.
Tessa reached out a hand, touched him on the arm. One touch that felt like a brand. “Please.”
“You’re sure about this?”
Tessa shot him a cocky smile, the one she always used right before torching her Flaming Lemon Drop shooter. “Oh, yeah.”
She sounded so confident, so capable, so…turned on. Maybe he’d misjudged last night. Maybe there was no reason for all his guilt. And then her body shifted, drawing his eyes. The scent of her, of Tessa, filled his mind until he couldn’t think. His blood heated, and right then Gabe really didn’t care about cleaning up or closing down. He needed to kiss that cocky mouth. Needed to touch her again.
He pulled her close and molded her to him, feeling the vulnerability, feeling the rightness of it. He looked down at her face, the eyes so carefully closed, but he didn’t worry about that. He needed to take that mouth again.
And it was exactly like last night. That same blaze ignited inside him. Her mouth was soft, so teasingly soft, and it opened easily for him, as if it was his own private stock. His hands traced over her, finding the places that he already knew. Gabe’s body, his cock, his hands, his mouth, already knew the game—and couldn’t wait.
Tonight she wrapped her arms around him, touching him in ways that she hadn’t last night. Her hand reached down, cupped him through his jeans, and he nearly shot off right there.
He wasn’t like this, he kept reminding himself. He didn’t lose it like Sean. But, damn, he was inches away from losing it now. He wanted to take her there, in the bar, with the lights shining from overhead, and he knew he needed to get control.
Her uncontrollable hand reached for the button at his fly, and he stopped worrying about the damned protocol. Desperately Gabe fumbled for the light switch, sighing with relief when darkness fell, only the dim glow of the city shining in from the front windows.
No one would know. No one would know but Tessa and Gabe.
He stopped her hand
