Too Wise To Wed?

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‘It’s a very stressful and competitive business, especially—’

‘For a woman?’ Star supplied challengingly for him.

‘For anyone,’ Kyle corrected her. ‘Especially when you’re working on your own.’

‘I like stress...and competition,’ Star told him. Was he trying to find out if she was involved with someone? If she had a partner...a backer...another man in her life? Determinedly she pushed her chagrin at his refusal to respond to her flirtatious teasing over the fish to one side. If he was interested in finding out if there was another man in her life then that was a good sign.

‘And I’m certainly far from being the only woman to set up in business on her own,’ she added.

‘True,’ he agreed. ‘They do say that the type of person most likely to succeed in business on their own is one who enjoys taking control of their own life.’

‘And you don’t approve of the female sex wanting to take control?’ Star asked softly, feeling that she was getting back on firmer ground.

‘Not at all,’ Kyle contradicted her. ‘It’s just that I often wonder if it isn’t so much a need to take control of their own lives as a fear of being in a situation where they are not in control that is the real emotion motivating such people—a fear of making contact with others, of being open to them...and vulnerable to them...that drives them into isolating themselves—’

Star stared at him across the table as he broke off to shake his head as the waiter offered him more wine; she was torn between an aggressive desire to deny what he was saying and a passively wary one to ignore it.

‘I own and run my own business too,’ she heard him saying as the waiter left, ‘and...’ He started to frown as he realised that she had stopped eating, and asked her solicitously, ‘Didn’t you like the bass, after all?’

‘The bass is fine,’ Star told him stonily, ‘but the conversation isn’t.’

Kyle gave her a thoughtful look.

Those dark blue eyes really were dangerously deceptive, Star acknowledged. The extraordinary depth of their colour tended to make one focus on that, rather than on the intelligence behind them.

Suddenly she felt extraordinarily tired. Delayed jet lag, she told herself. She had a meeting with Brad in the morning, for which she needed to be fresh and alert. The last thing she needed was to spend the evening with some pseudo new man whose idea of foreplay was to psychoanalyse her. But she couldn’t retreat now without getting at least some tacit admission from him that he did want sex with her; her pride wouldn’t let her.

She thought quickly and then decided what to do.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised faintly, ‘but I’m not feeling very well.’ She gave him a softly rueful look. ‘I wonder if you could help me to my room...?’

‘Of course.’

Star could see him frowning as he quickly summoned the waiter.

‘Would you like me to arrange a house call from the hotel’s doctor?’ he asked her concernedly.

Star shook her head.

‘No...no...it’s nothing, really... Just delayed jet lag mixed with too much sun this afternoon,’ she explained. ‘Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t put right...’

He had certainly been very efficient at settling their bill and getting them out of the restaurant with the minimum fuss and delay, Star had to acknowledge a few minutes later as they waited for the lift.

Once it arrived and the doors opened Star gave a delicately nervous shiver before reluctantly stepping inside.

‘I know it’s silly but I don’t really like them,’ she confessed only semi-untruthfully to Kyle as she stepped inside.

‘It’s a perfectly natural feeling,’ he assured her as he followed her in and waited for her to tell him her floor number. ‘I doubt there are many of us who actually enjoy being confined in such a small space, if we’re honest about it.’

When the lift came to a halt at Star’s floor Kyle politely stood back to allow her to precede him out of the lift before falling into step beside her.

Star deliberately waited until they were outside her bedroom door before starting to search her bag for her passkey, and then, when she did find it, she deliberately let it slip through her fingers so that Kyle had no option but to bend down to retrieve it for her, thus allowing her to close the small gap between them so that when he stood up again they were virtually standing body to body.

As she looked at his mouth Star deliberately let her own lips part slightly, her voice softly breathless as she thanked him for her key. She leaned forward, letting her body sway provocatively against his, her eyes starting to close on a small, whispered breath.

It was inevitable, of course, that he should respond to her, his head bending towards hers as he reached out to take hold of her.

It wasn’t just triumph that she could feel as her small ploy worked, Star acknowledged. The pleasure warming her body was not purely that of victory. She could feel his body against her own now, satisfyingly male and hard-packed with muscle. His skin smelt clean and fresh and she was already anticipating how good it would be to give in to the feminine urge to bury her fingers in the thick darkness of his hair when they kissed. And she knew that he would kiss well. His mouth had already told her that. She looked at it now, not needing to fake the look of sensual appreciation in her eyes as she lifted them to meet his.

She would be generous in victory, she decided dizzily, very generous, when she showed him just how good it could be, when she made him admit that he wanted her—and she would make him admit it.

She saw the way his eyes changed as he felt the full warmth of her breasts pressing against his chest and a sharp thrill of arousal ran through her as she saw the dark burn of desire igniting his gaze.

‘Kiss me,’ she whispered compellingly to him as she finally closed the small space between her own mouth and his and placed her lips on his.

He responded immediately, as she had expected, his arms tightening around her, his mouth reacting to the soft pressure of hers whilst she teased him a little bit with delicate butterfly kisses which ended, as she had known they would, with his opening his mouth over hers.

She had been right about him being good, she decided dazedly several minutes later. It wasn’t fiction any longer that she felt slightly light-headed and needed to cling to him for support, and there was certainly nothing faked about the way her heart was racing, nor the growing tumult of sensation threatening to flood her body.

She couldn’t remember the last time a man had affected her so powerfully or so immediately. In fact, she didn’t think there had ever been such a time...nor such a man. And she knew that he was equally affected. They were. standing body to body after all, and there was no mistaking or concealing his own, very male arousal and response to her, even if he had tried to move discreetly away from her—but Star was perfectly well aware that her own body was betraying her as flagrantly as his was him.

The fluid fabric of her dress could not possibly conceal the taut peaks of her nipples, but Star was not ashamed of nor embarrassed by her body’s response to him. Why should she be?

She was even tempted to lift his hand and place it on her breast so that he could experience for himself the effect he was having on her, but there was no need for them to rush things. They had the whole night ahead of them and there was something to be said for drawing out the pleasure of mutual discovery and its even more pleasurable culmination.

There was no doubt in Star’s mind that his mouth would feel every bit as good against her body as it did against her lips and that when he finally placed it against her naked breasts and slowly caressed each sensually aroused peak the pleasure she would experience would more than compensate for the control she was forcing herself to exercise now.

And besides...

Besides, it had been a long time—a long, long time—since she had last experienced something like this, since she had last been held and kissed by a man who seemed to read her mind and her desires so exactly that all she wanted to do was cling to him and let his mouth...

With a tiny little moan, Star moved closer and opened her mouth beneath his, inviting him to deepen his kiss with the thrust of his tongue, her body quivering with aching arousal as she waited for him to do so...and waited...and waited. Confused, Star opened her eyes.

Kyle had stopped kissing her now and his hands were cupping her face.

As she read the message in his eyes, Star’s own eyes widened, at first in disbelief and then in anger, her hands dropping to her sides as he kissed her lightly on the mouth once and then a second time a little more lingeringly. But even as she made to return to his arms he was gently releasing her, saying quietly but oh, so firmly, ‘I’m sorry...’

Sorry... He was sorry! Star couldn’t believe it.

Confused and wrought-up by the messages her body was sending her, Star couldn’t control the sharp-toothed bite of her shocked chagrin and the dismay that followed it as she exclaimed, ‘You’re sorry!’

How dared he do this to her? How dared he hold her, touch her, kiss her as though...as though...

Struggling to contain and control her emotions, Star took a deep lungful of air, trying to find a suitably acerbic response to his unbelievable withdrawal. But all she could think of was how his body had felt against hers, how she could have sworn he wanted her, how she knew that he had been aroused and that men, in her experience of them, did follow up on that kind of arousal, especially when...especially with her...

As she looked in furious disbelief from his mouth—stiffening her body against the treacherous memory of just how good it had felt to have it moving against her own—and up to his eyes Star realised that the expression she could see in their navy blue depths was not one of male sexual triumph as she had expected but instead a totally unfamiliar mix of warmth and compassion.

Compassion... He felt sorry for her. How dared he...? How dared he?

Immediately her defensive reflexes, honed over the years until they were needle-sharp, sprang into action, her spine straightening, her head lifting, her eyes flashing a fierce message of warning and pride as she stepped back from him and told him icily, with a disdainful shrug, ‘Don’t be. After all, I’m hardly missing out on the world’s most exciting sexual experience, am I? You aren’t the only man to feel threatened and emasculated by the strength and honesty of a woman’s sexuality... I suppose I should have realised what kind of man you were when you tried to hide behind that claim that you could only have sex with someone you “lurved”,’ she taunted him mockingly. ‘It’s the classic get-out for men like you, isn’t it...?’

She gave him a falsely compassionate smile and touched him contemptuously on the arm as she added, ‘We can’t all be the same, of course. But it must be hard, I know, for a man to admit that he’s only got a very low sex drive. Thanks for warning me about yours before things went any further. There’s nothing more disappointing for a normal, healthy, sexually motivated woman than a man who can’t...whose libido doesn’t match hers...’

Before she turned away from him and swept into her room Star paused to look tauntingly into his eyes, but, to her surprise, instead of betraying the chagrin and anger she had expected—after all, no man could endure having his masculinity, his sexuality called into question, especially by a woman—he was just standing watching her steadily.

The man was an idiot...a total blockhead. Star was still fuming half an hour later as she slipped between the cool, fresh sheets of her hotel bed. He had to be to have behaved the way he had.