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‘And then, of course, if I did go, there’d be the usual comments that I’m not fulfilling my traditional female role, that I’m not decorating the arm of some suitably impressive man—but not as impressive as my father, of course.’
Star suddenly realised that not only had she raised her voice above its normal level, cool pitch, but also that, shamingly, it was filled with angry emotion. What on earth was wrong with her? What had possessed her to reveal so much about herself—to betray so much about herself?
As Kyle watched the emotions chase one another across her face—anger, confusion, dismay, disbelief and, most telling of all, pain—he wanted to reach out to her, to take hold of her and make her whole again, heal all her hurts, show her that she was wrong, that she was perfect and fully worthy of being loved just as she was. Just as she was. And he also knew exactly how she would react if he tried, if he let her see how vulnerable he knew she was beneath that shield of prickly pride and acid cynicism that she used to protect herself.
He could see her so clearly as the child she must have been—an outsider...different...sensitive, and far too intelligent not to be aware of the prejudices and flaws in the adults around her.
‘I could come with you to the wedding if you like,’ he said.
The offer stopped Star dead in her tracks. She was already furiously angry with herself and thoroughly bewildered by her uncharacteristic behaviour, and Kyle’s words had left her totally nonplussed and bereft of her normal ability to make a quick, defensive comeback—unable to do anything other than simply demand huskily, ‘Why?’
Kyle had no intention of telling her why; instead he simply shrugged and answered, ‘Why not?’
‘I’m not going; there isn’t any point,’ Star said fiercely.
‘Yes, there is,’ Kyle contradicted her. ‘He is your father; they are all your family—’
‘I don’t have a father,’ Star told him flatly. ‘Nor a family; and I don’t want one either. I’m not going.’
‘Just like you didn’t go to Sally’s barbecue tonight. Funny,’ Kyle told her with deceptive gentleness, ‘I hadn’t thought of you as the type to run away from a situation that made you feel vulnerable. It just goes to show—’
‘I did not run away,’ Star interrupted him angrily. ‘And nothing, no one makes me feel vulnerable.’
Her eyes warned him against continuing but Kyle ignored the fiercely challenging look she was giving him, telling her, ‘If you really believe that, then you are lying, Star, and not just to me but, more importantly, to yourself, pretending—’
‘Pretending!’ Star had had enough. ‘I’m not the one who’s pretending,’ she stormed at him. ‘You’re...’
To her horror Star suddenly found that she couldn’t go on—that her throat was closing up, her eyes filling with tears. Tears... She never cried. Ever.
As Kyle saw first the disbelief and then the panic crossing her face as her eyes filled with tears and her throat muscles constricted, he decided that there was a time in every man’s life when he could allow himself to stop listening to his inner voice of caution and act on his instincts instead.
Through the blur of her tears, Star saw him stand up and come towards her but didn’t realise what he was going to do until she felt his arms come round her, holding her, drawing her firmly against his body, one hand securing her against him whilst the other rubbed her back in the same comforting way that she had seen parents comforting small children.
For some reason what he was doing, instead of restoring her to sanity, seemed to have the perverse effect of making her cry harder, in deep, gulping sobs accompanied by ridiculously childish hiccups, whilst his voice murmured soft words of comfort in her ear.
Men did not treat her like this, cuddling her and comforting her as though she were a small child; she did not behave like this—crying, clinging, wanting to be held, to feel secure... comforted...understood.
Understood. She stopped crying, her body tensing in rejection of Kyle’s hold on it as she started to pull away.
Kyle, who until that moment had managed to make his body understand that on this occasion she was not a highly desirable and sensual woman but a very unhappy and needy child, was very quickly reminded by that same body that those deliciously warm and feminine breasts that he could feel and virtually see beneath her thin covering did not belong to any child. He warned himself of all the reasons there were for not allowing himself to feel what he was feeling right now and then promptly ignored them as Star lifted her face up to his, her lips parting, ready to deliver what he knew would be some scathing and furious criticism of his behaviour.
What was it about the combination of vulnerability and strength in a woman’s face when it was wet with tears at the same time as her eyes were full of fury that evoked such an instant and age old male response? he wondered helplessly as he looked from her angry eyes to her softly parted mouth and gave up the struggle to resist the temptation in front of him.
Kyle kissed her, the unexpectedness of the warm pressure of his mouth on hers causing her eyes to widen in shock as she stared up at him in disbelief, her body motionless in his arms, as caught off guard as a young, untried girl.
She tasted wonderful, Kyle acknowledged, her mouth as sharply sweet as a delicious piece of fruit, tormenting his taste buds, making him want to take more and more.
Star blinked dizzily as he lifted his mouth from hers, touching her lips with the tip of his tongue. She looked at Kyle’s mouth and then raised her gaze to his eyes, her own cloudy and confused. An involuntary shudder went through her body; she looked back at Kyle’s mouth.
That look wasn’t faked or contrived, Kyle knew; he doubted that she even knew what she was doing or the effect it was having on him, he didn’t have to hear her whisper huskily, ‘Kiss me,’ to know what she wanted and she didn’t have to ask him for it either. He was covering her mouth with his own even before she had finished saying it, kissing the way he’d wanted to kiss her right from the very start.
Star had ceased to exist on her normal plane from the moment she had discovered that she was going to cry. Now she was vaguely aware of somehow, somewhere along the line, stepping out of her normal persona, her normal behaviour, but it hardly seemed worth concerning herself about when the movement of Kyle’s mouth on her own was filling her with the kind of physical sensation that would have made the explosion that led to the creation of the universe a mere nothing.
When her head fell back against Kyle’s supporting arm to allow his mouth easy access to the taut line of her throat, she whimpered in fierce, excited pleasure, digging her nails into the strong muscles of his back and raking it passionately as she shivered beneath his caress, her breasts lifting, their nipples taut and dark and clearly visible beneath their thin covering.
She was kissing him too, hungry, biting kisses interspersed with the shallow, frantic sound of her breathing, making Kyle want to wrench the thin covering off her body and slide his hand between those long, slender legs to find out if her womanhood had that same delicious. succulent moistness as her mouth.
He wanted to touch her with his fingers and to carry the scent and taste of her to his lips, to lick the flavour of her from them and then kiss her whilst he still had the taste of her in his mouth, to make her know that once the immediacy of their shared desire to come together was sated he wanted to repeat that intimacy by replacing his fingers with his mouth—and if there was any possibility that she might share his desire and similarly want to explore and know him, then...
Star whimpered deep in her throat as she felt the pulsing ache inside her body grow to a heated throb. She couldn’t wait much longer. She had never wanted a man with such...such intensity, such overwhelming insistence.
Her hands moved down over Kyle’s body, his mouth silencing her small purr of satisfaction with a kiss of fierce male hunger as she felt the hard surge of his erection. She didn’t want him like this, quickly and frantically, the pleasure gone almost before she could enj
oy it. She wanted...she wanted...
Dragging her mouth from his, she told him huskily, ‘Not here... In bed... I want...I want you in bed, Kyle... All of you, not just...’
He seemed to understand without her having to say any more because he was already turning towards the door, letting her guide him to where she wanted him to be, taking control only when she opened the bedroom door, pulling her back into his arms and kissing her deeply, using his tongue to show her the pleasure his body would soon be giving her, giving them both, as he pushed her robe off her shoulders and explored her body blindly with a delicate fingertip touch that left her shuddering and clinging achingly to him.
However, when she reached towards him and tried to undress him, he pushed her gently away and told her softly, ‘No, not yet... I want to look at you...see you...know you first, Star.’
She had no inhibitions about her body and felt no shame about her sexuality or her needs, and yet for the first time in her life, as he took a step back from her and silently, lingeringly let his gaze rove over her body, she knew what it was to experience uncertainty and insecurity—so much so that she actually found that she was holding her breath, wondering, worrying that... And then she looked into his eyes and her pent-up fear leaked away on an unsteady lurch of sharp emotion.
‘Star...’ She could hear in the husky, shaken timbre of his voice all that she wanted to know—his awe, his desire, his adoration of the perfect femaleness of her.
