she pushed her hand down between them, working to cup his erection, he took her hand quite firmly and placed it behind her back. When she gently bit his lower lip, pulling it between her teeth, he laughed.
Gabe leaned into her, and she could feel the hammering of his heartbeat against hers. The pulse of the heart wasn’t what she needed to concentrate on, she needed to focus on the pulse between her thighs. The pulse between his thighs.
Tessa pushed her hips closer, not so subtly telling him what she wanted.
His lips nuzzled the side of her neck, coaxing a moan from her. “Do you know who I am, Tess?”
The words were so husky, so pressing, so seductive, and she could hear his name echoing in her head, but she wasn’t going to do this. She already had one man’s name tattooed on her skin, a burning reminder of how far she still had to go until she could take care of herself. It was important that she keep the distance between them until it was time. Until she had built a life of her own. She trusted Gabe with pretty much everything but not the future. She trusted no man with her future.
Did she know who he was? “No,” she lied.
He laughed again, low, and this time one hand curved under her shirt, palming one breast, feeling the rise of her nipples, the swell of her flesh.
She arched into him, pushing her skin more firmly in his hand, needing the hot touch. He lifted her shirt, replacing his hand with his mouth, biting gently.
The ache between her thighs pounded now, and she could feel her resolve melting. Anything—anything—to fill the ache inside her.
“Do you know who I am, Tessa?”
“No,” she snapped, the knot of frustration winding tighter and tighter. And the desire, too. Always the desire.
This time his wayward hand went farther, unzipping her jeans, sliding down, lower, until one finger stroked against her core. Tessa cried out because this teasing wasn’t enough.
“Who am I, Tessa?” he asked, his voice rough, but still so familiar.
“No,” she answered because she needed the defenses between them. The one tiny wall remaining was all that was keeping her from falling down on her knees and giving up everything that she wanted.
Quietly, in the darkness, he removed his hands from her, zipped up her jeans and adjusted her shirt.
Tessa sat on the wooden spool, her body still shaking and tense, waiting for him to return.
“Please,” she started, needing him to finish, needing him inside her.
Needing Gabe.
She felt his gaze in the shadows, could nearly touch the cold snap of his anger. And his voice, when it sounded, was crystal clear.
“No.”
7
GABE MET SEAN FOR racquetball on Friday morning. Playing racquetball with Sean was usually a pain in the ass, but in the end Gabe had agreed because he had to talk to somebody about Tessa. Slowly, quietly, painfully, Gabe was going insane.
The challenge here was that Gabe would have to talk about Tessa in a way that Sean wouldn’t know Gabe was talking about Tessa, but Gabe figured he could handle that. He had to.
All due to this damned need of hers to pretend that Gabe wasn’t Gabe.
Yes, at first he’d thought it was hot. Every guy likes to think that his girl has an active fantasy life.
But every time? That sad truth wears a man down.
So on Friday morning he was stuck in Sean’s high-end athletic club, which was filled with white-collar alpha males needing to assert their masculine superiority in a twenty-by-twenty room with no windows.
Gabe dressed in cutoffs and an FDNY Engine 31 T-shirt, which was his token effort to assert masculine superiority. He took in Sean’s tennis whites, and arched a mocking eyebrow. “I think I should call you Mortimer or Preston or something equally nerdy.”
Sean shook his head and pointed to the court. “Hello, my name is Sean O’Sullivan. You mock my clothes. Prepare to die.”
Gabe followed him inside, slammed the door closed. Next he lifted his racquet, gave a cursory bow to his opponent—and then, the war was on.
Gabe took the first game fifteen to eleven. Sean came back, perfecting his killer smash, and took the second game fifteen to seven.
By the third game they were both sweating like pigs, and the game had regressed to a primitive slog to the death. Never let it be said that an O’Sullivan wasn’t competitive. One long hour later Sean took the match fifteen to thirteen. Gabe didn’t mind because this felt good. Relaxed. Powerful. And his mind was completely Tessa-free.
Progress, definitely progress.
Besides, he’d whip his brother’s ass the next time. There was always a next time.
They showered, changed, and Sean bought a drink for Gabe at the juice bar. Gabe ducked his head low in case anybody recognized him. He had a reputation to uphold, and sipping soy juice at some Nancy-boy health bar wasn’t part of it.
Only for Tessa—and she would never know the depths he had sunk to in order to keep this Twilight Zone of a relationship alive.
When the bartender shoved the glass of OJ in Gabe’s direction, Gabe sniffed and then raised his glass. “To my brother, who has fallen far, far from the esteemed ideals that the O’Sullivan name has stood for through four generations. Juice? Juice? What is this?”
“I think it’s important to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Alcohol can be dangerous,” Sean said, pushing back the hair from his eyes, trying to weasel his way into respectability.
“Sean, our family’s fortune was made on the ill-gotten gains of illegal alcohol. O’Sullivan’s started as a speakeasy. You can run to a career in the law, but you can’t hide.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t go straight.”
Gabe downed the juice in one gulp. “Are you sure we’re related? You’re the brown-eyed kid. Why brown? Did you ever think about that, Sean?”
“Why are you here?” asked Sean, sipping demurely at his carrot juice.
Carrot juice? Gabe sighed, wanting to avoid this, but he couldn’t. This was important. And if he had to humiliate himself in front of his lesser-respected brother, then so be it. “I need to talk to you about a woman. You are still interested in women, aren’t you?”
Sean laughed and appeared relieved by the change of subject, the flicker of humanity coming back into his eyes. “Desperate, aren’t you? Coming to the master.”
“Don’t rub it in, this is hard enough. I can’t talk to Daniel, because I can’t handle talking to Daniel about sex. That’d be cruel. I’m not cruel.”
Sean tugged at the cuffs of his Brooks Brothers shirt and studied Gabe like a scientist.
