The little speech fizzled out into the silence, which stretched unbroken until she became aware of the low hum of the fridge, just vague background noise suitable for magnifying the stillness.
‘I suppose we’ve just…just got ourselves into a pattern…’ she tripped on, losing the thread of what she was saying with each murmured word. ‘She’s the frivolous one and I…I indulge her…’
‘And who indulges you?’
Tessa was aware of colour invading her face, a hot, burning flush that seemed to originate from within the deepest part of her. She had rested both her hands on the table and was now aware of exactly how small the table was. Certainly not big enough for the two of them when he was staring at her like that and she was responding in classic overwhelmed female tradition.
Then he did something so shockingly intimate that the breath literally caught in her throat, almost as if her brain had shut down and could no longer give the message to her lungs that she should inhale.
He reached out and gently, oh, so gently, began stroking the side of her thumb with his finger.
For such a small gesture, it was unbearably erotic. She felt the dampness of arousal spread through her and when she finally did manage to breathe, it was laboured and painful.
‘Who does? Are you going to tell me?’ he coaxed softly, and she had to blink several times before she remembered what he had been saying in the first place.
‘I…I don’t need indulging…’ Her own whisper reached her ears with all the force of her forbidden excitement. For the life of her she couldn’t remove her hand even though her head was telling her to scramble her wits together and run away.
‘I don’t believe that…’ Curtis murmured. ‘Not for a minute.’ His finger moved from her thumb to the sensitive flesh of her wrist.
‘No boyfriend?’
Fascinated by the movement of his finger, Tessa shook her head slowly.
‘Ever?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve had boyfriends, but nothing serious…’ Her lowered eyes flickered and he felt a sharp burst of exultation and an arousal that was so hard that it was almost painful.
Without removing his hand, he slid out of his chair until he was squatting right in front of her, looking up at her. And still he continued that lazy caress of her arm, just a feathering of sensation that was sending her body into a vortex of sensuous excitement.
‘Poor baby,’ he murmured huskily.
Tessa half opened her mouth to find a reply to this throaty observation, but before any words could emerge he straightened and she gasped as his mouth hit hers with a blinding, urgent passion that stifled every rational thought.
The force of his kiss pushed her head against the chair and she wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing him closer to her and returning the kiss with all the pent-up craving that had been stalking her for weeks.
He pushed her hair back so that he could nibble her ear and his warm breath had her squirming on the chair, panting softly with her eyes closed, arching her neck in open invitation for him to do what he was doing now, trailing his tongue against it, feathering it with kisses while his hand smoothed her taut skin above the waistband of her jeans.
Jeans that felt too tight, too clinging.
It was bliss when he parted her thighs with one hand so that he could position himself between them. Then he circled her waist with his hands, running them up along her ribcage and finding the restriction of her bra as impeding as she did.
Lord, Tessa thought on a soundless groan, this is madness. But as he pushed up her shirt and pushed up her stretchy bra, madness and her ability to deal with it were lost in a swirl of intense, aching desire.
She had never felt like this before. Had never even come close.
In a daze of wonder, she half opened her eyes as his mouth found one nipple and he began to suck it. Her body slid rapturously down a couple of inches in the chair and she surrendered to the ecstasy of his warm, wet mouth exploring the tight buds of her breasts, loving them with exquisite tenderness.
She was experiencing a sensation of total meltdown, and it was only the sudden noise of the television that alerted her numb senses to the awful reality of what they were doing and to the even more awful reality of Anna leaving the sitting room.
With a squeak of horror, Tessa pushed him away, yanked down her top and her bra in one swift movement, over breasts that were still throbbing, and scooted to the furthest corner of the kitchen.
God, she couldn’t look at him. She just couldn’t. It would be like looking her worst nightmare in the face and knowing that it wasn’t about to go away.
How could she?
No point blaming him. She had responded enthusiastically, desperately, and the thought of that was like a flood of icy water rushing over her, straight through her body and right into her veins.