Which did show consideration. Certainly it was tied up with his wants, but he was not the taker she had thought him to be. He genuinely wanted to give her pleasure. He had definitely been considering her feelings. Unlike Grant Durham.
“Come on,” he said, heaving himself onto his feet. “Let’s clean up here and go cruising.”
They went to the boat and packed their lunch things away in the galley. Tessa didn’t mean to be provocative. She didn’t quite know how it happened. She was thinking how nice it was to be with a man who didn’t mind cleaning up things and putting them away, who didn’t expect her to do everything. The easy companionable way he shared the chore was so natural, as though they had been doing things like this together all their lives. And somehow her eyes couldn’t help feasting on him, the lithe economical way he moved, the male beauty of his face, the perfect proportions of his body so powerfully filled out...
“Stockton.”
She looked up, surprised by the harsh rasp in his voice. “Yes, sir?” she replied automatically, forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to call her that.
The dark eyes blazed raw desire at her. “I do not have a strong nobility streak,” he grated. “If you keep looking at me like that... Oh, to hell with it! I want you!”
He tipped the glass he’d been washing in the sink. He tore the towel out of her hands and tossed it away. He scooped her hard against him and plundered her mouth with an urgency that ran through Tessa like an electric shock, igniting a response that shattered all inhibitions. She wanted him just as fiercely... wanted him with a desperation fed by all her unanswered needs.
He leaned against the sink, drawing her with him, moving her in between his legs so that she was trapped by his powerful thighs, so that she was intensely aware of his arousal as he kissed her mouth, her face, her throat, with a fast feverish passion that allowed her no respite for thought. When he paused for a moment to lift off her T-shirt, his face was dark and brooding, his eyes glittering a searing challenge into hers as he tossed the garment away.
“Stop me if you want to,” they said, “but you’ll be lying if you deny me.’’
Tessa was not about to deny him. Her excitement was far too high to be doused, and the intensity of his need for her was like a wild intoxicant coursing through her blood.
He unfastened her bra and tossed it away. Lifted off his shirt and tossed it away. The muscles of his chest pulsed to his harsh shallow breathing as he cupped her breasts in his hands, moulding the soft flesh to his touch. His thumbs dropped to the underswell, his fingers splaying out beneath her arms as he slowly drew her to him, brushing her aroused nipples over his chest, easing her more and more against him, savouring the feel of her warm flesh giving, spreading over the firmness of his.
He threw back his head and a raw groan tore from his throat. His arms wrapped tightly around her, crushing her to him. He tipped her head back and once again his mouth ravished hers, stoking his desire and hers to screaming point.
She was barely conscious of their move to the stateroom. They fell onto the bed in a tangle, their bodies rolling. Her hands scrabbled through his hair, kneaded his shoulders, scraped over his back as his mouth worked its sweet devastation on her breasts, every movement a pulse of sharp pleasure. They squirmed out of the rest of their clothes, loath to lose any body contact, revelling in every touch of their heated flesh, sensitising each other to fever pitch.
Their coming together was another soaring into exquisite satisfaction, need chasing need, higher and higher, deeper and deeper, the spiralling turbulence finally exploding into ecstatic fulfilment. But best of all, for Tessa, was holding him afterwards, hugging him to her, stroking his hair, his back, indulging herself in sweet pretence, letting the need she felt flow through her and express itself in tenderness, while he was too drained of strength to move. She didn’t think of the future. Or where this was leading to. It was enough to hold him clasped to her, to feel his heart thudding against hers, to own him... a little.
Eventually he stirred and levered himself up to look into her dreamy golden eyes. He won’t recognise what I’m feeling, she thought. He won’t see what he doesn’t feel himself. So she stared at him without any attempt to disguise the deep well of emotion he had tapped.
He brushed his fingertips around her temple while his eyes studied hers as though they were strangely foreign to him. Then he bent and kissed her softly before moving away. Tessa did not try to hold him. Nor follow him. She knew instinctively that clinging would be anathema to him. He was a man who made his own decisions, who went his own way.
But he did not lie on his back, separate and apart from her. He propped himself on his side and idly trailed his fingers over her stomach as he studied her face some more. There was no tension in their silence, more a peaceful stock taking of where they were now.
“Would you consider coming to live with me, Tessa?” he asked.
It surprised her that he had made the leap from casual lover to a live-in situation. It meant that he wanted more of her than he had first indicated. But she wasn’t going to fall into the grey area again. Once was enough.
“No,” she said firmly.
There was no reaction on his face. Blaize Callagan gave very little of his inner thoughts away. He simply watched her intently, assessingly. “Any particular reason?” he asked after a short pause.
Tessa shrugged her shoulders. “You...living with one of your secretaries? You’d want to hide it, Blaize. Downplay it. Degrade it. I don’t blame you for that. It would only be natural. But it’s not for me. I’m not good at playing second fiddle to anyone. Not even you.”
He nodded his head. His brow creased in thought. “So we keep meeting like this.”
“I don’t think so.”
Again a cautious pause. Then lightly, “Any particular reason?”
“I don’t want to spend my life waiting for you to fit me into yours from time to time.”
“I’d make them good times, Tessa.”
She shook her head. “A string of fantasies, Blaize. I want real life. And I want a man who’ll share that real life with me. What you’re suggesting would only put me on hold from what I’m looking for.”
He gave that quite long consideration before he spoke again. “So this is our first weekend together, and our last.”
Tessa bravely hid the painful stab of disappointment she felt. No chance with him... ever. Of course, she had been foolish to think there might be. Men like Blaize Callagan simply did not get serious about women like her. Pie in the sky.