Over the next hour he tried – really tried – to focus on his own workout – lifting weights; doing several sets of crunches on the slant board while hefting a medicine ball; using the pull-up bar before dropping to the floor for as many push-ups as he could endure. But he found it impossible to stop sneaking glances at Tessa every five – or two – minutes, and then having to stifle a groan at the tempting sight she made. As she jogged on the treadmill, her breasts jiggled slightly, the exercise bra not quite as supportive as it ought to be. When she took her turn on the slant board, the waistband of her shorts dipped a couple of inches to reveal her navel. And as she bent over at the waist to stretch her hamstrings – flexible enough that her palms were flat on the floor – the hem of the tiny shorts crept up to bare part of her ass cheeks.
What made these frequent, furtive peeks at her even more alluring was the realization that she wasn’t even trying to seem enticing, and that she didn’t appear to even be aware of his gaze upon her.
After an hour, both of them were sweaty and fatigued. Ian took a long swig from a bottle of water before handing it to Tessa.
“Had enough for today?” he asked.
She nodded, swallowing a gulp of water. “I’m good. This is so awesome that you have your very own gym. You must work out here a lot.”
“I try to get in a workout at least five days a week, but I don’t actually use this room very often. The club I belong to is much larger and I like to use their pool and other facilities.”
She ran her palm up his arm under the sleeve of his workout shirt. “Is that where you box?” she asked in a husky voice, her big eyes seeming bluer than usual.
Ian stifled a groan as Tessa stepped closer, her breasts brushing up against his chest. “Yes, that’s the place.”
She gave his bicep a squeeze while her other hand slid up his chest. “Would you let me – that is, could I watch you sometime? Go through your workout? I’ve love to do that.”
“Of course you may,” he replied, pleased at her interest. “But we might need to wait on that a bit, love. Several of my executives belong to the same club and work out there frequently, so I’d have a bit of a tough time smuggling you in.”
Tessa rubbed her cheek against his throat. “Hmm, extra motivation for me to leave the company that much sooner, I suppose.”
His hands gripped her hips, pulling her close against him, and letting her feel his rapidly hardening erection. “When it’s time, I’ll get you a membership there so we can work out together. They have classes you might like, too – kickboxing, spinning, yoga.”
Tessa ground her pelvis invitingly against his cock, severely testing his already fragile self-control. “I love yoga,” she told him, sliding her arms up his chest to clasp around his neck. “Julia has brought me to her studio as a guest a couple of times and her teacher is amazing.”
Ian grit his teeth as she pushed her breasts into his chest. “I – ah, didn’t realize you saw Julia outside of the office.”
“Is that all right?” she asked anxiously. “I mean, she’s always been so nice to me and I don’t have many friends so - ”
“Hush.” He kissed her softly. “Of course it’s all right. I’d much rather see you going out with Julia than with one of the girls from the office. She’s far more grounded and sensible than any of them, not to mention engaged to Nathan.”
Tessa regarded him curiously. “What does that have to do with it?”
His hand splayed over the band of bare skin between her exercise bra and shorts. “She’s already spoken for, darling, which means she won’t be talking you into trolling singles bars looking for men.”
She tunneled her hands up beneath his shirt, exploring the muscles of his back. “And why would I want to do something like that anyway?”
He hissed as one of her hands slipped beneath the waistband of his athletic shorts, not stopping until it reached his buttocks. “So that you could find someone closer to your age, perhaps.” He shrugged, feigning a nonchalance he damned sure didn’t feel. “A hot, gorgeous girl like yourself would only have to walk inside a bar or a club, and you’d be swarmed with interested young men.”
Tessa swiftly slid her palms to either side of his face, gazing at him with fire in her blue eyes. “If I was in a room surrounded by a thousand different men, you’re still the only one I’d want – the only one I’d see. I don’t care about the age difference, Ian. My God, you’ve got the most beautiful body of any man alive. Why would I ever want anyone else?”
Her passionately spoken words not only touched him profoundly, but aroused him fiercely. “I’m a damned lucky bastard,” he muttered. “Though I’ll have my work cut out for me keeping up with you, my sweet. Extra workouts, more vitamins, increasing my intake of red meat. I’ll need to do all of that and more in order to have enough energy to keep you satisfied.”
He yelped as she very unexpectedly gave him a smack on the ass.
“You’re making me feel like some sort of sex fiend,” she pouted prettily. “I can’t help it if you turn me on.”
“Are you turned on now, Tessa?” he breathed in her ear. “Tell me, love, are you wet?”
She groaned as he cupped her buttocks and ground himself against her cleft. “God, yes!”
His tongue traced around the dainty shell of her ear. “And are your nipples hard?”
The little laugh she gave was positively wicked, and he was rather shocked at how quickly she’d shed her inhibitions. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?” she challenged in a naughty voice.
“Jesus, Tessa.” He didn’t have to look down to realize his erection was already tenting his shorts. His gaze fell instead on the lush mounds of her breasts straining behind the snug fitting exercise bra. Her nipples were definitely hard, poking against the slick fabric, begging to be touched.
His fingers toyed with the pull tab of the bra’s zipper. “I admit to having an ulterior motive in mind when I picked this particular item out.”
Her breathing had grown choppy. “What – what kind of motive?”
Ian began to lower the zipper very slowly. “This kind.”
Tessa was trembling as he finished unzipping the bra, her breasts bursting free to tumble into his waiting palms. She let out one of those erotic, drawn-out moans as he squeezed her breasts then tugged at her nipples.
“Oh, oh, that’s so good!” she cried. “Please don’t stop.”
“God, darling, you make me crazy with those little sounds you make,” he groaned, bending his head to take one of her nipples in his mouth. He circled the hard tip with his tongue before sucking the entire areola into his mouth.
He was so focused on lavishing attention on her breasts that he wasn’t aware of her hand slipping down between their tightly fused bodies. At least not until she began to tentatively palm his throbbing cock, a light touch that nonetheless almost had him exploding on the spot.
“Tessa.” This time he was the one who moaned, long and low.
“Let me.”
He was helpless to resist her as she pushed his shorts down past his hips, freeing his pulsing erection.
“Fuck.” The harsh curse hissed out from between his tightly clenched teeth as her warm, smooth hand closed around his cock. He sensed her uncertainty, the hesitant way she tried to please him, and he placed his shaking hand over hers.
“Like this. Long, slow strokes. God, yes, just like that. Easy, love. Christ, what you do to me.”
She picked up the rhythm quickly, her hand stroking his cock until he was groaning, thrusting eagerly in sync with her motions. Then she startled him again by sinking to her knees, the tip of his penis mere inches from her full, lush mouth.
“Is this how you pictured me?” she breathed seductively. “How you’ve wanted me?”
His hands gripped her shoulders tightly as she continued to stroke his erection. He made a raw, dangerous sound deep in his throat as he gazed down and saw what a decadent, carnal picture she presented – tendrils of blonde
hair escaping her ponytail to curl about her flushed cheeks; her blue eyes huge and round as they stared up at him wantonly; her lips full and trembling, eager to suck him off and give him untold pleasure. She still wore the unzipped exercise bra, her ripe tits fully bared to his gaze, the nipples hard and pointed. She looked like sex incarnate, the most tempting, irresistible beauty he could ever imagine, and she was his – all his – to do with as he pleased.
“This is exactly how I pictured you,” he murmured hoarsely. “Except you’re even more beautiful, more tempting.”
“Tell me how to please you, what you like.”
Ian honestly didn’t think he could do it – instruct Tessa in the finer points of giving him a blow job – at least not without coming hard within the first few seconds. But somehow he managed to do just that, telling her what he liked, praising her efforts, groaning when she learned all too quickly how to bring him to the very edge. At his guttural, brusque instructions, she ran her tongue up and down the length of his penis before closing her lips over just the tip and sucking hard. Her tongue circled the broad, plush head of his cock, licking up the thick beads of pre-cum, before taking as much of him as she could inside her mouth. His hands fisted in her hair, pulling it free of the ponytail, as she sucked him eagerly, as though she’d been doing this forever instead of mere minutes.
Ian’s legs were shaking, and he was dimly aware of being more aroused then he’d ever come close to being in his entire thirty-nine years. At the last minute, when he was perilously close to losing it and coming hard down her throat, he jerked himself out of her mouth and took a step back.
“Together,” he uttered rawly. “We’ll come together.”
They quickly stripped off their remaining articles of clothing before he lifted her in his arms and carried her over to the closest wall, slamming her up against it. Tessa barely had time to wrap her legs around his waist before he plunged inside of her with one savage thrust.
The blood was roaring in his ears so loudly that he could barely hear the little gasps she made as he pounded her against the wall, holding her up as though she weighed nothing. He was crazy with lust, so consumed with the driving need to possess her, that any sort of rational thought was impossible. As if from a great distance, he heard her give a high-pitched cry and then her tight, slick pussy was clenching around him like a fist as she reached her climax. The shout he gave as he came mere seconds later was more like a bellow, echoing around the room.
Tessa was shaking in his arms as he gently eased her to her feet, wrapping her in a fierce embrace.
“God, please tell me I didn’t hurt you,” he begged. “I didn’t mean to lose control that way, to be so rough with you.”
She shook her head as her arms banded about his waist. “You didn’t hurt me. And I like that you were a little rough, that I can make you lose control a bit.”
“Did you now?” he asked, amused. “I think if I let you, darling, you could turn me into a wild animal. Once again, I’m not certain I could even spell my name right now.”
She shivered in his arms. “I’m cold. Can we get into a hot shower, please?”
He grabbed two towels from a shelf in a corner of the room and wrapped one about her shoulders. “Of course, love. But what if we make it a hot bath instead? That way,” he murmured wickedly against her ear, “we can check off one more item from your list of firsts.”
***
Tessa seemed quiet and pensive the rest of the afternoon and evening, as though something was troubling her. But Ian tactfully didn’t push or pry, sensing that she was having an inner struggle with some matter.
He’d taken her again during their bath, but it had been a far cry from the frantic coupling they’d shared in the gym. He’d taken his time with her in the huge sunken tub, petting and soothing her with soft kisses and exquisitely gentle caresses. Their lovemaking had been slow and tender, but she had still been so wrung out afterwards that he’d had to physically lift her out of the tub and dry her off, as though she were a small child. Tessa had been sleepy, clearly not used to the multiple demands he’d made on her body in less than twenty four hours, and he’d laid her down carefully in his bed. She’d been asleep within minutes and he had watched her for almost half an hour before forcing himself to leave the room.
The fierce storm had finally ebbed, and he’d taken her out to dinner, this restaurant far more casual than Le Mistral. It was a charming Italian café not too far from his house, and the owners knew him well. Ian chatted with them briefly in Italian, and introduced them to Tessa.
Over a shared Caesar salad, platters of steaming, fresh pasta, and a bottle of red wine, he’d studied her with some concern. Even her appetite was off tonight, as she ate only sparingly and drank more water than wine. She looked beautiful, of course, wearing one of the outfits he’d bought her – skinny black jeans, a dark blue sweater that skimmed over her lush breasts, and black high-heeled ankle boots. Her cheeks were still flushed becomingly from her nap, not to mention all the sex they’d been having, and she was damned near irresistible. The restaurant was crowded, and Ian’s perceptive gaze didn’t miss even one of the very interested male glances that fell Tessa’s way. At one point he reached across the table and took her hand in his, sending out a silent message to anyone looking that this one belonged to him.
He longed to ask her what was wrong, if there was something he could do for her, but continued to keep quiet. Instead, he only made occasional small talk over dinner, giving her the space she so obviously needed, and tried to tamper down his unsettled feelings. He was more than half afraid that Tessa was having second thoughts about all of this – about him, them – that she was realizing he was in fact too old for her or that she wasn’t ready for another relationship so soon after being divorced. She was likely agonizing over how to tell him, especially given the fact that he was her employer and she didn’t want –
“Ian.”
He glanced up at her softly spoken word. She was worrying her bottom lip to keep it from trembling, and he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. He took a swig of wine, needing the fortification. “What is it, love?”
She slid her hand over his, giving it a squeeze. “I want to tell you everything. About my mother. And my marriage. And, well, about me. I’m ready.”
He felt an overwhelming sense of relief at the exact time a wave of empathy washed through him. He squeezed her hand back reassuringly. “All right, darling. Let’s go home and you can tell me whatever you like.”
Chapter Thirteen
“My mother was bipolar. I didn’t know that’s what her illness was called until I was about eleven or so, when I was old enough to ask questions and do some research. Up until then all I knew was that sometimes Mom was happy and liked to do fun things, but other times she was very, very sad and didn’t get out of bed most days. As I got older, the sad times started taking her over more and more, until that’s all there was.”
Tessa paused to take a tiny sip of the brandy that Ian had insisted she drink. She’d never tried the stuff before, and while the first couple of sips had made her shudder, there was no denying that the undoubtedly expensive liquor was beginning to warm her up.
“Mom was a writer,” she continued. “She actually had several books published and the royalties she got helped support us for a while. Then she started falling deeper into depression and could barely function most days, much less write. And when she did try writing during her manic episodes, it was just a bunch of nonsense, nothing that made sense or that she could ever hope to have published.”
Tessa and Ian were sitting in his library, one of the coziest rooms in his house. He’d started a fire since she had felt chilled, and he was now sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, giving her the space she needed as she visibly struggled to tell him about her life.
“You never tried to find your father?” he inquired gently.
She shook her head. “There was really no place to even begin to do that. One of the few tim
es in my mother’s life when she was actually lucid enough to talk about it, she admitted that I’d been conceived during an especially manic period of her life. The – the research I did later referred to it as hypersexuality. In other words, she slept with a lot of different men in a very short period of time. Any one of them could have been my father.”
Ian gave a brief nod. “And I’ll just assume she never bothered to learn any of their names?”
“Yes, you’d be correct with that assumption. So, no, there’s absolutely no chance of ever learning who my father is. It was just my mother and I, since she’d lost contact with all of her family as well.”
He touched her cheek softly. “Was there no one else then to help you, Tessa? No friends, neighbors, a doctor perhaps?”
“No. We moved around – a lot. When Mom got into one of her manic phases, she’d be full of all these plans, ideas for a new book, and most of those times she’d decide we had to move somewhere different so she could find inspiration. We lived all over the Southwest – Arizona, New Mexico, southern California, west Texas. We’d move at least once a year, sometimes as many as three or four times.”
He frowned. “That couldn’t have had a positive effect on your schooling.”
Tessa gave a bitter little laugh. “It was absolute hell, as one could imagine. I was always the new girl in class, having to play catch up with what all the other kids were learning. I was constantly getting used to a new teacher, a new book, a different way of learning. My grades suffered, and it was usually a struggle just to keep up. And my mother certainly wasn’t any help with studying or schoolwork. When she was manic she’d actually encourage me to skip school so that we could go out and have fun that day instead. And of course when she was down – well, she couldn’t even look after herself, much less take care of me.”
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