Balancing Act (17 page)

“Seth?” It was a whisper that ended on a soft purr of pleasure when he reached her sex.

He teased her with his fingers, parting her and fondling her with his lips and tongue. He found the sweet bud of flesh at her very center and nuzzled it. This time Tessa gasped and arched. He chuckled. There was something to be said about being first, especially with this woman.

“You’re so responsive.”

When she cried out, he lifted his gaze to watch her, amazed at how lost she was in the wonder of it, the almost mindless pleasure that washed over her again. He was able to do this for her, his woman. His cock throbbed in response. Not about to take her in the middle of a table on the deck of his beach house, Seth stood and lifted her, carrying her through the sliding glass doors and into the master bedroom. The pace of their loving slowed as they each took time to explore the other’s body, learning what touch or taste teased or pleased. They dozed, only to wake and turn to each other again.

Seth awoke before dawn. Tessa slept next to him, curved along his side. He slipped off the edge of the bed and pulled on his boxers before stepping out on the deck so he could watch as the sun lightened the eastern sky, turning it from a midnight blue to an ever-burgeoning and brightening array of colors. As gorgeous as that was, the woman now sleeping in his bed fascinated him even more. He turned and leaned against the railing, devouring her sleeping curves. Thinking of the passion he’d awakened in her was enough to have him hardening once more in desire.

Over the years, plenty of women had set their sights on him. As the eldest Barlow-Barrett, he was a matrimonial catch, but Seth had avoided those entanglements. It had made him cynical, leaving him with the feeling that no woman would ever be able to see beyond the name and the empire to Seth, the man. Even the women he chose to date had understood from the start he was looking for sex, not commitment. If they had a problem with that, he had always walked away.

Tessa was different. He’d thought about an affair with her, but had thrown that idea out the window in Chicago. As jaded as he had become over the years, even he couldn’t take what she wasn’t sure she even wanted to surrender. But it was more than that. At last he had admitted to himself it wasn’t just sex he wanted with her. Although that was fantastic, he wanted more. He wanted all of her, every day and every night.

The problem was he didn’t know if she felt that same way. There was the age difference between them, and her own stiff-necked independence. Even her revelations about her family appeared to him to be more of a wedge than a bridge between them. While she might come from the same type of background he did, she had no fond memories to go along with it. And as far as seeing him as a man? She had seen him at his worst in the office, yet she was not only still working with him, but had allowed their relationship to become more than business.

He would take her sailing. Out on the ocean, maybe he could talk about feelings so powerful he felt awed when he touched her.

* * * *

Tessa awoke to the gentle brush of lips against her cheek and a whisper in her ear. A smile curved her full lips as she turned toward Seth. He knelt next to the bed.

Rich coffee with just the right amount of cream. The aroma teased her senses awake.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” he coaxed. “I have breakfast waiting outside. Get dressed and we’ll spend the day sailing.”

An hour later, Tessa was seated at the rear of the sailboat with the wind already teasing tendrils of hair loose from the ponytail she had tucked through a baseball cap. Her dark glasses were back in place, the better to watch Seth unobserved. He was so at home out here, his motions second nature to him. As the wind filled the sails, he tacked, taking them along the coastline. He was far enough off shore they could enjoy privacy, but close enough the water was still not so deep they couldn’t anchor when it came time to make sandwiches. The sole tense moment for Tessa was when she had to use the head, but Seth told her to leave the door open so she wouldn’t feel so confined.

After clearing up lunch, he pulled off his shirt, leaving him clad in his trunks. Tessa slid off her shorts to reveal her bikini bottom and was getting ready to pull off her shirt when Seth’s quiet voice interrupted her.

“You don’t have to leave your suit on if you don’t want to.” His eyes twinkled as he said it. “We appear to have the ocean to ourselves today.”

Tessa smiled at him and then pulled her shirt over her head. Her bikini top followed, and she stood before him with her creamy breasts bared to the sun. Still holding his gaze, she took the bottle of sunscreen and massaged lotion over them, her motions slow and seductive. She watched his Adam’s apple bob and his gaze lower to the movement of her hands, and she laughed. If he’d been teasing, she’d called his bluff.

“May I help?” he purred, stepping closer to her.

“By all means.” Tessa let him take over. In just minutes, she gasped with pleasure, her breathing ragged and uneven.

“Sit down,” he commanded, and gently pushed her to the cushioned seats along the edge of the boat. He poured more sunscreen into his broad palms and massaged the warm lotion into her skin, starting at her feet and working his way up over her delicate ankles to her calves and then the sensitive area behind her knee. Tessa sucked in a breath and Seth smiled, his teeth gleaming against his tan. His hands moved higher, rubbing the sunscreen along the length of her thighs before parting them to touch the sensitive skin along the inside.

“Seth?” Her voice wasn’t much more than a moan.

“Why not take it all off, Tessa?” he coaxed. “I will too. Would you like that? Only the two of us are here to see.”

She nodded, his gentle stroking hands again making the heat spiral through her and leaving her wanting so much more. His fingers hooked in the top of her briefs and Tessa lifted her hips so he could slide her bottoms down her thighs and toss them to the side. He stood up and slid his own trunks down so he was as naked as she. Tessa’s heated gaze traveled from his intense stare down over his furry chest to the thrust of his cock.

He was so close. She leaned forward and clasped him in her hand, enjoying his low moan as she massaged him from base to tip, and cradled his sac in her other hand.

“Tessa!” It came out on an agonized groan after she leaned forward and let her lips trace the path of her hands.

Tangling his fingers in her hair, he moaned in pleasure, and she teased him again and again. He pulled her up and sat on the seat, with her straddling him. Their hands continued to caress each other until he grasped her wrist to still her movements.

“Condom. In my shorts,” he gasped.

She found the packet and ripped it open before sliding it over his hard length. He lowered her onto his erection as though he wanted their coming together to last all day. Then he was buried inside her.

“Is it too much? You’re so tiny, I’m always afraid I’ll hurt you.”

“Never,” she whispered against his mouth. “We fit together just right.”

Bracing her feet on the seat and wrapping her arms around his neck, she began to ride him. Seth’s head lolled backward in complete abandonment as she brought him to a shivering, groaning orgasm. Still deep inside her, he caressed her with his fingers until she collapsed against him and found her own sweet release.

They swam, the ocean cool against their nude bodies, and then Seth once again massaged her with sunscreen before they dozed on a thick blanket atop the boat he’d named
Wanton
. She felt that way with him. She woke up to find him studying her, his golden eyes soft and serious.

“I’m falling in love with you, Tessa,” he admitted, his voice gruff.

She wanted to believe. Every instinct cried out to her that she could trust this man. He would not tell her what he thought she wanted to hear. If Seth said it, he meant it. She wanted to believe, but the part of her that had seen her trust destroyed so many years ago still held itself aloof, refusing to believe it was anything more than the afterglow of some really great sex.

“Seth…”

She knew wariness lingered in her eyes. Rather than hear her put a voice to it, he put his fingers over her lips. “Shh. You don’t have to say anything, Tess. I promised no strings and I meant it. I just wanted you to know you mean more to me than just an amazing lover.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Let’s go home.”

They went out to dinner that night, traveling north along the coast to enjoy some of the rowdier night life. Some of the bars they visited shocked Tessa, but Seth laughed and whisked her onto a dance floor crowded with couples not always of the opposite sex. They made love on the beach that night. Seth brought a thick blanket out with him. He undressed her by the light of the moon and then as the surf rolled in a few yards away, he rocked her in perfect time with the crashing waves until desire overtook both of them, making their movements hurried and intense. Their eyes locked just moments before Tessa arched underneath him. He caught her scream of pleasure with his open mouth and plundering tongue and rode her until he too slipped over that edge of ecstasy.

They agreed to head home around lunchtime. Neither one of them wanted the weekend to end, but reality had a way of intruding. Seth reached for her hand as they traveled and held it to his lips for a brief kiss. She accepted it as a benediction of sorts, a sign they were back to the real world where he was Seth Barrett of Barrett Newspapers, and she was the ever-capable Tessa.

Chapter 10

Monday morning Tessa called her bank again since she’d heard nothing back. The representative on the line insisted the mystery deposit was supposed to be in her account. Tessa insisted it wasn’t, and no one yet seemed to know the source of the unexplained money.

“Every time we try to pull up the transaction record, we’re getting an error message, Miss Edwards.”

“That’s because it
is
an error.” Tessa ground her teeth in frustration. “It’s not supposed to be in my account. Well, I’m sure someone will come looking for it. I can’t imagine ten grand would disappear from an account without someone, somewhere taking notice.”

“We’ll continue to try to correct the problem, Miss Edwards.”

She hung up in disgust. She’d certainly want to know what had happened to ten thousand dollars if it were hers. At this point, though, she felt it was the bank’s problem to resolve. She’d told them and would just pretend the money wasn’t there. Anything else would be foolish in the extreme. She understood their reluctance to remove the money when they couldn’t yet pinpoint if it was even there, but her unease over it lingered. She supposed most of that was due to her innate desire to have everything in order.

In the meantime, she had other tasks to complete, so she went back to work on Seth’s trip to the West Coast papers. He would leave mid-week to visit northern California and Oregon before returning home late Friday. Brandon had the jet on a trip to Dallas, so Seth would have to take a commercial flight. Tessa took care of booking and paying for the flight with the travel account, and returned to the itineraries and meeting schedules for each of the papers he would visit. Seth had insisted he fly back late Friday because he would be making a turnaround to be at his niece’s christening in North Carolina.

Tuesday, Tessa reviewed the final itinerary and meeting agendas and made last minute adjustments before faxing everything to the papers on the West Coast. Seth was back in a brooding mood again. Tessa knew it had to do with the subject of the meetings. The papers weren’t performing up to expectations, and Seth was going in to troubleshoot and, if necessary, fire managers who weren’t cutting it.

She called the bank once again after lunch, but they had still not resolved the problem. As she hung up, Seth captured her hand. “May I take you to dinner tonight?”

She swallowed at the hot look in his eyes, everything else going right out of her head, and nodded. She floated through the rest of the afternoon, feeling somewhat reassured. With the way Seth’s mood had been, she had begun to wonder if their weekend together had been a fantasy she had dreamed up because it was what she wished would happen. He picked her up at seven and took her to one of the most exclusive restaurants in the area. They sat in a back corner, where they had some privacy, and talked about their weekend at the beach.

“I’d like you to come with me to North Carolina this weekend,” Seth said.

Tessa looked at him with uncertainty. “But it’s a family event, Seth.”

“All the more reason for me to want you there.”

Tessa’s temperature climbed at the look on his face. His words of love on the
Wanton
hung there, seducing her. As he drove back to her house, he caressed her hand. He switched the ignition off when they arrived.

“Would you like to come in for some coffee?” Tessa asked, hoping he wanted more than that.

He nodded and came around to open the door for her. He escorted her up the sidewalk and opened the door that led into her small two-bedroom apartment. She’d furnished it with quality pieces that would withstand the wear and tear of a small boy.

“Have a seat,” Tessa said over her shoulder. “I’ll go get the coffee started.”

Seth grabbed her and twirled her back in his arms. “Forget the coffee.” He smiled. “I’d much rather sip this.”

His lips tasted hers with a gentle demand that soon grew to ravenous proportions. She sighed against his lips, and his hands dropped to caress her bottom through her skirt. He dragged his mouth from hers and pressed her face against his broad chest.