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Her confidence returning, she waited for him to come to her, to take her in his arms, and he kissed her slowly and lingeringly as he picked her up and carried her towards the bed. By the time he reached it his mouth had travelled as far as the tiny hollow at the base of her throat. By the time he lowered her onto it he was caressing the smooth slope of her breast. By the time she was actually lying on it his mouth had reached the rigid peak of her nipple, and she expelled a long, slow moan of satisfaction as his gentle caress became firmer, stronger, his kiss turning to a rhythmic suckle. Blindly Star reached for him, her hands tugging at his shirt, and then she smelt it...that unmistakable scent of another woman’s perfume.
It was like free falling without the security of a parachute, knowing that only pain lay ahead, that there was no escape from it. No hope of any safety. And with her knowledge of that pain came shock, anger and panic.
There was no need for her to do any more. She had all the proof she needed. She had been so right to mistrust him. These and a hundred other thoughts she didn’t want to acknowledge raced through her brain, her body awash now with confused emotions and sensations.
Valiantly she tried to recover her lost ground, to convince herself that what had happened had all been part of her grand plan, that she had known what she was doing all the time, that she had simply pretended to want him, that she had never really been in any danger of losing control.
As he felt her body stiffen in rejection of his touch, Kyle lifted his head to look at her.
‘Thank you,’ Star told him, ‘but there’s no need for you to go any further. You’ve already proved my point for me...proved that I was right about you...’
‘Right about me?’ Kyle could see the antipathy glittering in her eyes and hear the contempt in her voice but he had no idea what it was he was supposed to have done.
‘You’re a fake, Kyle,’ Star told him triumphantly. ‘A liar...a cheat...no different from the rest of your sex... You didn’t want just sex—sex without emotion—remember?’
Kyle closed his eyes and held onto his self-control—just. Now he understood. He knew what was happening, what she was trying to do. Self-preservation, self-protection was all very well and his compassion helped him to accept her need to deny what was happening between them, to reject the emotions that he was pretty damn sure she felt as strongly as he did in favour of the safer alternative of mere physical need, but he was still a man, after all, and right now...
‘Star,’ he told her firmly, ‘there’s no way that what we’re experiencing...sharing...could ever remotely be described as “just sex”. I understand that it’s difficult for you—’
‘No?’ Star cut across him bitingly. ‘So it wasn’t sex; what was it, then? Love?’ she challenged him mockingly. The harsh tone of her voice jarred but Kyle refused to allow her to force him into a fight.
‘I don’t know,’ he told her softly. ‘But what I do know is that there was a hell of a lot more going on between us just then than the mere physical arousal of two bodies—’
‘Really? Well, you should know. I suppose you said the same thing to Lindsay, did you?’
‘Lindsay?’
He was an actor, Star acknowledged, she had to give him that, but then of course he would have to be able to carry off the kind of act he liked to put on.
‘Yes, Lindsay,’ she repeated tauntingly. ‘Remember her...? She’s the one you were with before me...the one whose lipstick you were still wearing when you came in...the one whose perfume you are still wearing right now. Right here.’
She let her fingertips touch his throat and the open neck of his shirt—the open neck she had further unfastened in her desire to touch him and hold him, to—
The savage, raking pain that tore at her was surely far too intense to be put down to mere anger against men and their perfidy, their deceit... But determinedly she ignored that knowledge and instead tried to find release from it by digging her fingernails into his skin purposefully, painfully before releasing him, her mouth curling in disdain as she told him, ‘You smell of her perfume... Of her...’
Those last two words weren’t true, but Star didn’t care. She wanted him to know how completely he had betrayed himself, how utterly contemptible she found him.
‘And just for the record,’ she added, determined now to settle every single score, ‘I never really wanted you, Kyle...not even just for sex. You’re not my type. All I wanted was to show you how pathetic you are and how easy it is to see through your lies.’
Kyle had had enough. Compassion was one thing; allowing her crazy paranoia to go unchallenged and unchecked was something else again.
‘I do not lie,’ he told her grimly. ‘I don’t have the need. Neither do I have the need to create some fantasy world for myself filled with fantasy villains because it’s the only way I have of trying to pretend that I haven’t been hurt and that I’m not afraid and vulnerable. I don’t need to cling to the belief that all women are like my mother and that because she didn’t want me and she walked out on me that means that I was to blame, that her inability to mother me lies with me. Your father walked out on his marriage and you because—’
‘It wasn’t my fault... It’s not true... I tried to be good, to be what he wanted.’
White-faced, Star almost screamed the words at him as the angry tears flooded her eyes.
‘No, Star,’ Kyle agreed gently, ‘that’s right—it wasn’t your fault—but deep down inside you don’t really believe that, do you? Just as you refuse to believe that you might just possibly be wrong...that I might just possibly have genuinely wanted you, physically and emotionally... that I haven’t lied at all, that—’
‘Go to hell,’ Star screamed at him. ‘How can you want me when you’ve come to me from Lindsay’s bed? I don’t believe you.’
‘No?’ Kyle queried thickly, his patience finally snapping. ‘Then try believing this...’
Star couldn’t believe how quickly he overpowered her, taking hold of her and imprisoning her flailing arms whilst he silenced her furious protests with his mouth, kissing her with an angry passion that excited a response inside her that blasted apart her self-control and had her clinging to him, fighting fire with fire, kissing him back with just as much furious sexual urgency as he was showing her, knowing that it wasn’t just the hard pressure of his hold on her that was welding her body to his, knowing that his visible physical arousal only mirrored the inner secret ache of her own.
‘I have not been making love to Lindsay... I have never, would never go from one woma
n’s bed, one woman’s body,’ he emphasised, ‘to another’s.
‘I could take things to their natural conclusion between us now—take you now,’ he told her rawly, ‘and prove to you just how wrong you are, not just about me but about yourself. God knows I want to. But if I did I would be breaking one of the rules I’ve made for myself, which is never to touch a woman in anger. But then you aren’t a woman really, are you, Star? You’re just a hurt, angry child, wildly hitting out at every man who comes near her because the one man she needs to love her doesn’t.’
His mouth smiled as he caught the warning hiss of her indrawn breath but his eyes didn’t. His eyes, Star registered painfully, were completely blank of any emotion, and as he released her and got off the bed she started to shiver with reaction.
Her pride wouldn’t allow her to conceal her body; instead, she stood up and held her head up proudly, following him to the door. When he reached it, he paused and turned to face her. Was it her imagination or did a tiny muscle beat frantically in his jaw as he looked at her?
‘And, for your information, the only woman that I...my skin...my body...could possibly smell of tonight is you. I wanted to fall asleep with the scent of you all around me. The taste of you in my mouth. Did you know that?’ he asked her quietly.
To her shock he suddenly came up to her and bent his head to kiss her naked breast before telling her thickly, ‘I wanted to taste you not just here but here as well.’ And then, before she could stop him, he touched her briefly but deliberately, intimately, just where her body was still achingly moist and ready for him.
Star couldn’t stop herself from betraying her shocked reaction. It burned two bright red spots of colour high on her cheekbones and tightened her already over-taut muscles.
‘Yes, I know,’ Kyle said heavily to her. ‘You want me to go!’
