He growled.
She started to unbutton his shirt.
“You’re a witch. You know that?” he accused, busying his hands on a similar exercise. “A provocative little witch who cast a spell on me months ago.”
She slid her hands over his bare chest and ran her fingernails over his strongly muscled shoulders. He shuddered. His eyes narrowed threateningly.
“I think I might use one of those bottles of d’Yquem.”
“Well, we’d still have one left,” Tessa consoled him.
“On the other hand, I don’t like to repeat myself.”
“Surprise me then.”
He did. In many and glorious ways. Tessa secretly thought to herself that he really was a fantasy lover, but he made it all beautifully real. Ecstatically real. Afterwards, she even felt brave enough to ask him about his marriage to Candice.
“It was good for its time,” he replied. “It was what I wanted then. A very active social scene. Riding high. Maybe we would have grown together.”
He fanned Tessa’s long hair out on the pillow as he thought about it. “I can’t imagine I would ever have had with Candice what I have with you.”
“And what’s that?” she asked.
“We don’t need anyone else,” he answered simply. “Like that weekend we had on the boat. It was great...just being with each other. And now it’s like that all the time for me.”
“For me, too,” Tessa said softly.
He trailed butterfly kisses around her face. “When did you know that you loved me, Blaize?” Tessa asked curiously.
He gave her a rueful little smile. “Oh, about the time I picked you up to put you in the helicopter. That felt very right to me. This is my woman, I thought. But, of course, I knew you weren’t mine. Then the situation changed and I thought I could make you mine. Until you cried that second night... and I couldn’t comfort you. Because I was the wrong man—’’
“You weren’t the wrong man, Blaize.” She held his face between her hands, and her eyes glowed all her love for him. “I cried because you made me feel so much, and I didn’t think you cared for me at all. It seemed so wrong. But it wasn’t wrong at all. It was right, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It was right.”
He kissed her deeply in the full knowledge of their love and need for each other.
It was their wedding day.