When He Loved Me

Chapter 25🌶️

CALLUM

As Tess placed her hand in mine, every cell of my body screamed yes, and the connection between us burst alive. My arm circled her waist, and I leant in to brush my lips across her temple before ushering her out the door of the restaurant.

"You smell incredible." Her vanilla scent had me enthralled and after searching for any doubt in her eyes—and finding none—my lips descended on hers.

It was a soft kiss, loaded with a promise for more. My tongue teased her, and she met me with fervor. The dominant in me was fighting for control to explore her mouth, but I captured her face in between my hands before parting breathlessly.

"We can't risk too much in public."

Especially standing on the sidewalk of a restaurant and knowing that the paparazzi were interested in more gossip. While I was dying inside to taste more of her, I would forever try to be her protector in the madness we faced.

"You're right," Tess mumbled, her face a tantalizing shade of red. "We shouldn't." Her fingertips touched her swollen lips softly, as if tracing where I had touched her with mine.

"Did you enjoy dinner?" I asked, using the excuse to run my digits across her bare arms, enjoying the goosebumps left in my wake. "You're cold."

Shrugging off my suit jacket, I draped it over her shoulders and I watched in enrapture how she clutched her hands over the fabric and held it close to her body. She would smell like me after wearing it, and something primal rose to the surface from deep inside me.

"Yes, I did." Tess stepped closer to me and weaved one of her hands with mine.

I craved these kinds of interactions with her, not hiding my feelings and just being out in the open and being able to touch her. Hold her hand like this.

Lifting it to my mouth to kiss her knuckles, I murmured: "I'm glad," against her soft skin.

During the ride in my car, we didn't speak a word, but the sexual tension enveloped us like a web. It pulled us closer with lustful gazes and sultry touches. My hand reached over the console and instinctively she laced her fingers with mine. An intimate action that had my hunger for her intensifying.

Tess was everything I wanted in my life.

Spending time with her over the past weeks we had worked together on the co-joined project had only intensified those feelings.

Something simmered under my skin as we navigated through the building after stepping out of my car. A skittering anticipation, building up inside of me. A cumulus of years of longing, of pushing away everything that threatened to crawl forward from inside my heart while she belonged to another man.

The tension was unbearable; the questions drifting in my mind present, as I wondered if I could call her mine after tonight.

Her silence was telling, nervous in the same way I was, knowing that following our feelings and desire for each other would have repercussions.

As soon as we entered the hallway of my apartment, I closed the door behind me and switched on the lights.

Tess looked around the loft. "It's impressive," she said. It was her first time seeing a space that was completely my own. The high ceilings and the sleek design of Scandinavian furniture. Her hand slid across the slab of marble of the kitchen island.

"Don't mind the boxes still left to unpack." I motioned to the corner where they were stacked. "Haven't gotten around to them yet."

I stepped behind her, feeling her warmth against my front, seeping through the fabric of her dress. The thing had taunted me the entire evening, as it accentuated her every curve and dip of her luscious body.