“Yes, sir,” she said, not giving him any ammunition to criticise her.
“Look at the universe out there, Stockton. Open your mind to it. Doesn’t it make you feel the need to achieve something?”
“No, sir.” She didn’t have any need whatsoever to prove anything to the universe. All she had ever wanted was a decent life with a man who loved her.
“Doesn’t it make you feel small and insignificant and insubstantial?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not, Stockton?” He sounded slightly puzzled, as though he couldn’t comprehend such an attitude of mind.
“It takes something really big to make me feel small and insignificant and insubstantial.” Like Grant Durham’s floozy.
He gave a soft little laugh. “I like your style, Miss Stockton.”
Tessa felt a ripple of deep satisfaction. He had granted her the respect of a title. Miss... She wondered if she would ever be a Mrs., and had a moment of black depression.
Only a moment, because they had reached the cottage and suddenly Blaize Callagan turned and lifted her onto the first step up to the verandah. Which put her face to face with him so to speak.
“I like your style very much,” he purred as he took off her glasses, folded them and popped them into his breast pocket.
Then he kissed her. And the stars of the universe were completely blotted out as he explored the dark sweet cavern of her mouth. Tessa stopped thinking. Blaize Callagan’s kiss didn’t leave any space in her mind for thoughts. He filled it with a marauding host of sensations, and as he pressed her closer and closer to him, her body wantonly responded to the hard evidence of a need that Blaize had no intention of denying.
He had meant two nights.
CHAPTER FIVE
No seductive moves this time. No talking. No asking. Blaize swept Tessa off the verandah step and carried her straight to his bedroom, urgency in every stride, urgency in ridding both of them of clothes, pressing her naked body to the pulsating power of his, kissing her with hungry passion, hands working fast to free her hair from its constraint, burying his face in its luxuriant silkiness, arching her body into the hard muscularity of his, groaning a primitive satisfaction in the yielding softness of her femininity.
No holding back. No contest for control. He came with her as he lifted her onto the bed and took her as he kissed her, a swift urgent invasion, plunging for the hidden depths of her to fill them with him, to immerse himself in her.
It was a complete coupling. Whether it was a need in both of them to forget everything else, or whether their bodies were simply driven by age-old instincts, or whether there was some dark common chord of innate savagery that rose to meet and answer the demands they made on each other, Tessa neither knew nor cared.
There was an intense satisfaction in the way their bodies moved together, an exhilarating intimacy, a knowledge that went beyond reason, response and counter-response, a greed for every sensation possible, excitement exploding into more excitement, an ecstatic fulfilment in the climax that rushed upon both of them, a sense of bonding that was very real, however fleeting.
And it was fleeting.
Blaize separated himself from her. With gentleness. But decisively. He lay on his back, his body completely still except for the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing gradually slowed to a normal pace.
Tessa did not want to think tonight. She turned her head and watched him, wondering what thoughts were going through his mind. If he was thinking at all. Perhaps he simply let his mind go blank at such times as these.
Tessa knew she shouldn’t resent his silence, or his absorption in himself. Yet it didn’t feel right that they could be so close together one moment and so far apart the next. Perhaps it was against the rules of an encounter, but she wanted more from him. The kind of physical communion they had just shared screamed out for corresponding verbal communion.
“Does that help assuage the emptiness, sir?” she asked, careful to keep any emotional demand out of her voice.
“It helps, Stockton,” he said quietly. “It helps a great deal.’’
He’d dropped the “miss” again. The message was crystal clear. She was back to being a body. One that had given him what he wanted, but only a body, nevertheless.
He turned his head and looked quizzically at her. “What about you?”
“Oh, I had a good time, thank you very much,” she said airily. Although her heart felt like lead, for some reason.
He rolled onto his side and scrutinised her face, as though searching for something. There was a slight crease between his brows, suggesting that she presented a puzzle to him that he hadn’t yet solved, and he didn’t like anything eluding his ability to pigeonhole it. Even a slight gap in his all-knowing mind could not be tolerated.
Good, she thought fiercely. If for no other reason, you will remember me for that, Blaize Callagan, because I will not give you the satisfaction of pigeonholing me.
A gleam of purpose burned into the dark eyes. “I think what we need is a drink,” he said.
“What a fine idea!” she said, but if he thought a drink would loosen her tongue, he could think again.
“Stay here, Stockton,” he instructed. “I’ll bring it in.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He heard the derisive note in the “sir” and shot her a sharp glance as he rose from the bed.
She gave him her best smile.
His eyes glittered appreciation of the ploy, but there was also a threat or a warning in the glitter. Blaize Callagan did not give up on what he went after. She had become a curiosity to him, and he wanted his curiosity satisfied.
He left the bedroom without bothering to don his bathrobe, totally unself-conscious about his nakedness. Tessa decided she wasn’t going to be self-conscious about hers, either. It did seem rather stupid to even consider it after all that had gone on between them.
He returned a few minutes later with an opened bottle of yellow-gold wine and a couple of glasses. Tessa sat up against the pillows. He smiled at her, obviously liking what he saw. Which was fine. Tessa liked what she saw of him, too. He poured the wine into the glasses and handed her one. Then he clinked her glass with his and smiled some more.
“A glass of wine and thou,” he said.
“You forgot the loaf of bread,” she answered dryly.
He laughed and stretched out on the bed beside her, looking supremely content with his world. “Tell me about yourself, Stockton,” he invited, idly stroking her skin with his free hand.
“I’m twenty-four years old, and not one of the years that I’ve lived would interest you, sir,” she said dismissively.