by Penny Jordan
A man would have to be a saint to remain unaffected by what she was doing, Kyle acknowledged achingly. No studied, practised, deliberately calculated seduction could have had one tenth of the effect on him that her instinctive, artless, innocent betrayal of her desire to be close to him was now.
Somehow or other his gentle fingertip-touch against her skin had become a slow, lingering, rhythmic caress that had found the delicate, narrow indentation of her waist and moved beyond it to the full, rounded curve of her breast, just made to fit perfectly within the cup of his hand.
Star gave a softly voluptuous sigh and arched her spine. Kyle groaned out loud. Star was touching him now, exploring the hard muscles of his back and moving lower, whilst the soft warmth of her breathing against his throat quickened. Against the hand that covered her breast he could feel her nipple swell and harden, just as his body was doing—just as it had been doing from the moment she’d started to move closer to him.
Reluctantly Kyle released her breast and started to ease her away from him gently, bending his head to kiss her forehead tenderly as he did so, only Star wouldn’t let him go. Her hands clung to his shoulders and she was moving her body so that she was as close to him as it was possible to be, one long, slim leg wrapping itself firmly around him so that...
Kyle could feel the heat burning up under his skin as the T-shirt he had lent her rode up and he felt the warm, silky, bare length of her thigh pressing against him. He reached out, intending only to move her.
It was more than any man could be expected to stand...any man. With a smothered groan, Kyle gathered her closer, one hand sliding up under the T-shirt as he held her, the other lifting to push the soft mass of her hair off her face and slide along her jaw, cupping it lovingly as he bent his head to kiss her.
He kissed her once, very gently and delicately, a second time for no better reason than the fact that her mouth tasted so sweet and he was so hungry for her that he just couldn’t resist it, and then a third time, deeper and longer, because, well, if a man was going to damn himself he might as well do the job properly, mightn’t he?
Of courses he might, and of course Star woke up. How could she not do?
Star was not in the habit of dreaming about being made love to and certainly not about the kind of lovemaking that included delicious, tantalising half-kisses that touched and awoke and inflamed her senses more intensely and erotically than any real, experienced kiss she could ever remember.
She didn’t like having such dreams and, more specifically, she didn’t like having such dreams about the one man who was least likely to want to participate in them with her. They made her feel angry and cheated...and...and vulnerable, as though there was something missing from her life—which was ridiculous; how could there be anything missing from the life that she had specifically and deliberately chosen and tailored for herself? Of course there couldn’t be.
She tried to say the words out loud—a sure-fire mantra which had never failed to work in the past—only this time she couldn’t actually say the words because something... someone was making it impossible for her to do so. Someone was kissing her; someone was...
Star opened her eyes and then closed them again on a dizzy wave of disbelief. Kyle was kissing her. Kyle was holding her. Kyle was lying so close to her that she could feel every single movement of his body against her own, every breath he took...every beat of his pulse... Every beat of his pulse...? Impossible. ‘Impossible!’
She said the word quite clearly as Kyle lifted his mouth from hers in anticipation of her furious demand for an explanation of what he thought he was doing. And then he realised that no such demand was going to come, that she had in fact closed her eyes and snuggled back into his arms with a sigh of pure, feminine, seductive bliss, following her instincts and reaching up towards him, her hand on his jaw as she lifted her head off the pillow to close the small distance between them, her lips unexpectedly hesitant and searching as they caressed his own—more questioning than demanding, Kyle recognised as he kissed her back, his tongue tracing the shape of her mouth.
The immediate shudder of response that convulsed her body surprised them both, Star’s body tensing, her eyes opening as she waited warily.
She didn’t like being responsive to him, Kyle sensed. Her body language told him that she wanted him to let her go, but he refused to respond to it.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her softly. ‘I thought this was what you wanted...to prove...’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Star snapped back at him, suddenly wide awake and made antagonistic by her realisation of what was happening to her and how vulnerable she felt. She was never the one to become so quickly and so intensely aroused—certainly not by a mere kiss. The sensation of wanting to be close to him...of wanting him...was alien and unfamiliar to her and she was afraid of it.
‘Let me go,’ she demanded tautly. ‘I don’t want—’
‘You don’t want what?’ Kyle interrupted her softly. ‘Me?’
He raised his hand and cupped the side of her breast, letting the tip of his thumb just touch the erect crest of her nipple whilst he told her gently, ‘Liar.’
It was a case of being cruel to be kind, he told himself in justification of the stricken, panicky expression that he could see darkening her eyes. Instinct told him that she had never been in a situation like this before, never known what it was like to be afraid of her own sexuality.
Whilst she watched him her hands curled into two small, tense fists. Kyle bent his head and very gently kissed the centre of each breast, one after the other, his caress leaving the fine cotton fabric of his T-shirt clinging moistly to her skin.
He had never previously thought that there was anything particularly erotic about the sight of a girl wearing a wet T-shirt that was clinging to her otherwise naked breasts, but now, suddenly, there was a sensation inside him that was all male and entirely primitive. Before Star could stop him he had bent his head to her body again and this time there was no way she could control her fevered response to the sensation of his mouth dragging the slightly abrasive, damp fabric against the sensitivity of her skin.
Given that cerebrally the last thing she wanted was for him to continue what he was doing, it was perhaps a trifle contradictory for Star to give a little smothered gasp of pleasure and arch her body up against his mouth in deliberate incitement of a continuation of his mouth’s sensual destruction of her self-control.
Star clutched at Kyle’s shoulders, her nails digging into the hard muscle as wave upon wave of barely endurable pleasure swamped her. She was a sensual, sexual woman who had thought that she understood her body and was familiar with all of its responses, but this...!
This aching, overwhelming need was something else again and, as she had with everything else in her life which had made her feel threatened and vulnerable, Star fought against it, frantically trying to push Kyle away as his hands lifted her T-shirt and his mouth moved from her breasts to her ribcage and then lower, gently caressing and arousing every single inch of her skin.
Male desire, male urgency, male hunger—all of these she was used to, all of them gave her power and weakened the man who exhibited them. Male tenderness, male gentleness, male desire to give her pleasure——these were alien to her and she was both angered and frightened by them. They overwhelmed her, undermined her, made her want to reach out and hold onto the man caressing her, made her want to cling to him, to give the real essence of herself to him, and Star had never given anything of herself to any man, not since her father had abandoned her, not since she had realised that giving your love to a man meant being hurt by him.
Her love!
Star froze, the only movement in her body the small ripple of sensation just under her skin where Kyle’s mouth had been slowly caressing the smooth curve of her hip.
But she didn’t love Kyle.
This need she could feel battling with her brain’s fierce exhortation to her to push him away, to make herself safe, this desire
to reach out and touch him, to feel his skin beneath her hands, her mouth, to hold him and wrap herself around him, to draw him deep, deep within her body and to hold him there—all this was nothing... It meant nothing. How could it when he meant nothing?
His fingertips stroked sensually along the inside of her thigh. How could she ever have thought that his refusal to touch her must mean that he was somehow sexually inadequate? she wondered. This man could do more to arouse her senses to a fever pitch of aching need with a single kiss, a single touch, than any other man had been able to using every kind of sophisticated foreplay that had ever been imagined.
His mouth trailed moistly along her hip-bone, following the fierce pulse-beat of need that was beginning to throb through her whole body.
He was, Star witnessed, as unconcerned about her viewing his own arousal as he was concerned about ensuring that she experienced every single sensation of her own.
In the dawn light she could see his body perfectly clearly through the sharply painful glitter of the tears which had, for some reason, filled her eyes and blocked her throat.
His body was everything that a man’s body should be—well muscled without in any way becoming a caricature of over-developed and somehow totally nonsexual maleness, his skin warmed by the sun but not over-tanned, his body hair darkly silky, heart-lurchingly male both to her sight and her touch.
She wanted to reach out to him as she had never wanted to reach out to any other man, to touch him with her fingertips and her mouth, to know and explore him—not clinically and cold-bloodedly, with the single-minded purpose of arousing him, but for her own pleasure as well as for his and because she actually wanted the feel and the taste of him beneath her hands and her mouth. Oh, how she wanted them. Oh, how she wanted them...and him.
Star closed her eyes to block not just the weakness of her tears but, even more importantly, the sight of so much temptation.
But nothing could block out her senses, her mind...her heart, her vulnerability and the root cause of it.
‘Stop it... I don’t want this.’
Kyle heard the words but it took several seconds for their actual meaning to sink through the fierce thrill of aroused pleasure that the sensation of Star’s wonderfully warm and responsive body beneath his mouth gave him. Every touch, every caress, every soft drift of his mouth released a small, frantic torrent of responsive quivers and movement. He had never known a woman so warmly and vibrantly alive, so sensually aware. Just holding her and touching her the way he was doing right now was more deeply, sensually pleasurable for him than any lovemaking he had known in the past.
The thought of how she would feel, how she would be when he eventually reached the hot, sweet heart of her was already making his heart pound with deep, heavy hammer-blows of surging longing.
He would take his time, draw out the moment of pleasure, kiss and caress every tiny bit of her, touch her gently with his tongue in that special, sensual and oh, so sensitive place, waiting until she was ready for him before taking her fully into his mouth and feeling her body dissolve in liquid waves of sensual release.
But she was telling him that she didn’t want that. That she didn’t want him. Reluctantly Kyle responded to her rejection, her denial.
The moment he released her Star scrambled off the bed. Her legs were shaking so much that she could barely stand up. She felt sick and anxious and angrily frightened as well...
‘No,’ she said loudly, her body going rigid as she fought to reject her emotions. Kyle, who had been about to reach out to her, let his hand drop back to his side.
‘I rang you several times this morning but there was no reply.’
‘No, there wouldn’t be. I wasn’t there,’ Star told her mother shortly.
It was less than an hour since she had finally managed to get into her flat with the aid of a locksmith who had exchanged the kind of knowing male look with Kyle when she had explained her predicament that set her teeth on edge.
And, of course, the commotion they’d caused had brought Amy out to see what was going on, and Star had been well aware of what was going through her mind when she had asked where Star had spent the night and Kyle had responded immediately, ‘With me.’
Although why she should care or feel angry and self-conscious she had no idea...she told herself. Only, of course, she did, just as she knew exactly why she was so reluctant to explain to her mother what had happened.
It had nothing to do with any kind of embarrassment or guilt over the fact that she had spent the night with a man and everything to do with her own illogical behaviour and emotions. Even now she still couldn’t believe what she had done. She, a woman who had always prided herself on being in control of her sexuality, for some totally inexplicable reason had suddenly become so overwhelmed by it, so afraid of it that she had had to take refuge in the kind of female behaviour that she had thought belonged solely to nervous young virgins.
No woman of her experience ever let things get to the stage that she had done and then said no. No woman...but she had. And not because she had suddenly had a change of heart and decided that she didn’t want Kyle. Oh, no. Certainly not because of that...If only!
A change of heart! Star closed her eyes and tried to swallow past the huge, painful lump which had blocked her throat. How very appropriate that she should pick on such a phrase... How appropriate and how appalling...
‘Star...? Star, are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m still here, Mother,’ she responded huskily, dimly aware that her mother was in the midst of complaining about Emily’s wedding again, but too preoccupied with her own thoughts to try to stop her.
‘I was just wondering why on earth your father’s making such a thing about Emily’s marriage. It isn’t even as though she is his child. Of course, he always did enjoy throwing her in my face...the child of the woman he discarded me for... making it obvious that she took precedence over you...’
Star sighed. She had heard it all so many, many times before. ‘Perhaps he genuinely did prefer her to me,’ she pointed out quietly to her mother. ‘After all, she was... is...far more the kind of daughter he wanted.’
‘Rubbish... He just did it to spite me. Well, it’s just as well he didn’t invite me. I couldn’t have gone. As a matter of fact...’
Star frowned as her mother’s voice faltered betrayingly.
‘Well, I might as well tell you now... I shall be getting married myself. Very quietly, very quietly,’ she stressed. ‘And we’ll actually be away on honeymoon the day Emily gets married.’
Star took a deep breath.
‘I see,’ she said as neutrally as she could as she tried not to visualise her mother standing side by side with the gangly, still not fully grown teenager who was her current lover, making what in Star’s opinion was a total mockery of the sacred vows of marriage.
‘And Iris... Has she become reconciled to you and Mark marrying or—?’
‘Mark!’ Her mother’s response was immediate and shocked. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Star. I’m not marrying Mark; he’s only a boy, a child...’
Not marrying Mark. Hard on the heels of her relief Star felt her stomach start to chum with the familiar sensation of anger and anxiety that her mother so often caused.
‘Not Mark,’ she repeated slowly. ‘Then who are you marrying, Mother?’
‘Why, Brian, of course,’ her mother responded impatiently, for all the world as though Star were a particularly dense child. ‘Who else?’
Who else indeed? Star opened her mouth to remind her mother of all the other ‘who elses’ there could have and had been and then closed it again.
Brian Armstrong was one of her mother’s oldest friends. He had known her before she had met and married Star’s father and he had remained patiently and, so far as Star was concerned, unfathomably devoted to her in all the years since.
Whenever her mother was in trouble it was Brian she turned to. He was her rock, her one true friend, she had once laughingly told him in
Star’s presence, and Star, eight years old then, seeing the painful way he blushed and looked away, had been torn with embarrassment at witnessing such intense adult emotion and anger at her mother for causing it and for being oblivious and uncaring of what she was doing.
Brian had loved her mother for as long as Star could remember, but never once had her mother given any indication that she might return that emotion.
‘Brian,’ she said numbly. ‘But Mother—’
‘I know what I’m doing, Star,’ her mother interrupted her firmly. ‘I should have married him years ago but I suppose I wanted to show... to prove to your father that he wasn’t the only one who could change partners whenever the mood suited him... I saw him not long ago, you know... He had those three children with him—the triplets... He looked so old... Poor man... I almost felt sorry for him.
‘Brian and I are getting married in the Caribbean, by the way,’ she told Star. ‘So romantic... It’s time you got married, Star,’ her mother reproved her. ‘I can just imagine how Louise will be crowing over the fact that her daughter is getting married first.’
‘Mother...’ Star started to protest warningly, but her mother was already announcing that she had to go and replacing the receiver.
Her mother remarrying...again. Well, at least she was marrying Brian and not Mark, Star reflected, which was probably the most sensible, the only sensible decision that her mother had made in her entire life.
Unlike her mother’s, all her decisions were sensible and well thought out. She never acted on her emotions, nor allowed them to rule her. Never...
‘And Kyle asked me to ask if you could come in to see him and bring whatever work you’ve managed to do on the campaign so far,’ Star heard Tim’s secretary explaining to her as she cradled the telephone receiver against her ear.
‘Well, I haven’t really got very much to show him as yet,’ Star said untruthfully.
But Mrs Hawkins had obviously been primed by Kyle not to accept any put-offs, because she insisted, with quiet firmness, ‘He has a free slot this afternoon at four and I know he’s hoping to fly home this weekend to report to Brad.’