Duel of Passion

by Madeleine Ker

  After a final swim, Emma curled up in the shade of a sand-dune and fell asleep, while Kyle took Sophie on a gentle ramble along the water's edge.

  The relationship between them had been growing more warm and intimate all day, and now they just walked in silence, not talking much, just sharing the beauty of the day and the landscape.

  Ìt really is extraordinarily lovely,' Sophie sighed at last, as they stopped and looked back along the shimmering sand. The warm, lapping sea had all but obliterated their footprints. They were the only two solitary figures in all the vast beauty of sea and sand.

  `You fit in well,' he said softly, 'because you're an extraordinarily lovely woman. I find it hard to believe that you're not surrounded by a coterie of pursuing men,' he went on.

  'You must have left them in England.'

  `No, there's no one in England.'

  `Not a soul?'

  `There are always men in my life,' she said, meeting his eyes briefly. But not in the sense you mean.' `What sense do I mean?'

  `W ell, I presume you're asking me whether I have a lover,' she smiled.

  Ànd the answer is no?'

  `Not at the moment.'

  À true Virgo?' Kyle was looking at her with an expression that made her heart suddenly clench in reaction. He was wearing only faded denims, his powerful torso naked to the sun. She, in her mauve one-piece, with a frayed straw hat shading her eyes, looked captivatingly graceful and feminine.

  `You're exquisite in this light,' he said in a quiet voice.

  She tried to laugh the comment off, and turned away. Despite her daily swims and exercise, she was feeling pleasantly tired. She couldn't match the power of that hard body of his. `My legs are aching exquisitely, at any rate.'

  `How else could exquisite legs ache?' he smiled. Ì must have worn you out with all that swimming and walking.'

  Ì'm not as strong as you are,' Sophie pointed out. Ì've loved it—I just feel a bit the way Emma does.'

  Ì ought to be shot. Let's go and sit on the sand over there.'

  They walked over, and settled down in the lee of the breeze that had sprung up. The sand was warm, radiating back the heat of the day. With a sigh of bliss, Sophie lay back against its soft, yielding warmth, and closed her eyes. 'To think that all this has to end,' she said dreamily. 'It doesn't seem fair. Beauty should never have to end.'

  She felt his fingers touch her hair, caressing the salt-stiffened tangle gently. She half opened her lids languidly, looking up at him with eyes that had taken on the colour of the evening sky.

  `This is what I like about you,' he said.

  `My awful hair?' she smiled.

  `Your beautiful hair,' he corrected. 'The way you don't fiddle and fuss with it all the time. I like women to be natural. I hate that neurotic, twitchy way some women behave.'

  She thought of the way her fiddling with her glasses had irritated him in Brighton. He was leaning over her, smiling down at her, and at that moment she felt very close to him, and that she wanted him very much.

  Ìs it a cliché to say that you're radiant?' Kyle asked. His fingers trailed down the satin-smooth skin of her cheek to trace the delicate arc of her jawline. 'Your skin is the colour of gold, yet it's got an almost pearly quality, finer than the finest silk that was ever spun.'

  `The afternoon has gone to your head,' she said, trying to ignore the long fingers that were caressing her neck.

  `Maybe,' he conceded. 'How are your legs?'

  `Better.' His caresses were not having a soothing effect on her. His touch was deliberately sensual, yet as light as thistledown. 'We must have walked miles today.'

  He did not answer, but bent slightly to touch her lips with his.

  A touch, no more. The velvety warmth was there on her mouth, then gone. She felt her lips part, her eyes closing with the reaction that had swept across her skin.

  `You've got goose-bumps,' he said softly, his fingers trailing down her arm where the fine golden hairs were erect. The extra-responsive condition of her skin made his touch

  something between torment and ecstasy. Sophie felt his lips touch her forehead, drifting down her eyelids.

  The warm moistness of his tongue told her he was tasting the sea-salt on her temples, and she shuddered involuntarily. She was in the grip of a kind of sweet hypnosis, immobile in the warm sand while Kyle kissed her face, his mouth never touching hers, drawing close, then moving away with maddening deliberation.

  When at last her lips touched his, Sophie knew that it had been by her own movement.

  She lifted her full, sensitised mouth to his, and felt him kiss her there at last, his arm sliding round her to draw her close.

  Her lips clung to Kyle's, possessed of a will of their own. His tongue traced the shape of her soft lower lip, touching her white teeth, meeting the sensitive tip of her own tongue. His lips pressed harder as passion took the place of exploration. He was tasting the deep inner secrets of her mouth for a dizzy moment; then he drew away, as though trying to discipline them both.

  Ì've been dying to do that all day,' he whispered.

  He kissed her cheeks, her delicate eyelids, his mouth moving down her throat to find the scented hollow where her pulses fluttered madly.

  She couldn't stop the soft moan of desire from escaping her parted lips. She had hungered for Kyle for so long, and this moment was so sweet. It was happening at last, the impossible dream she had ached for long ago ...

  Her slim arms slid around his neck, pressing his face to her throat, her neck arching as she felt the harsh touch of his teeth.

  Who was conquering whom? She felt his palm caress her ribs, drawing closer to the gentle swell of her breast, where the skin was already tightening in reaction. His touch was possessive, yet thrilling. She was melting inside, her adoring heart starting to fail her.

  Kyle whispered her name, his hand sliding into the V of her bathing costume to stroke the silky skin of her breasts. The sensation was so much more erotic than she could ever have dreamed. His touch was. tender, yet accomplished; he knew how to touch a woman. She moaned aloud as his palm caressed the sultry tips of her nipples, drawing them into concentrated stars of aphrodisiac passion. His very gentleness was tormenting. The sensitive areas of her body were starting to throb with hunger, and Sophie felt her self-control start to slip.

  With a supreme effort she drew away from him and unclasped her hands from round his neck.

  `W e'd better get back to Emma,' she said, in a voice that shook slightly. 'And we'd better stop what we're doing right now.'

  `W hy?' he wanted to know, smiling down at her with smoky eyes. His fingers eased aside the stretchy mauve top of her costume, revealing the paler curve of her breast, the rosebud tip tight and demanding at the centre.

  The dark expansion of his pupils registered the way her nakedness had affected him; then, obeying the tacit demand, he bent his head, his mouth closing over her nipple.

  Sophie gasped at the intimate kiss, his tongue feeling as rough as a cat's against her tender skin.

  She ran her palms shakily over his powerful shoulders, up his neck. His hair was thick and crisp under her fingers as she drew his head down, wanting him to touch her harder, more fiercely. Kyle's teeth closed around the aroused flesh of her nipple, the caress becoming almost cruel. The pleasure was wickedly intense, drawing a whimper

  from deep in her throat. His hand was finding her other breast, seeking her other nipple, making forked

  lightning dart along her nerveways into her loins, turning desire into quivering hunger.

  Unable to bear it now, Sophie arched away, and pulled the soft material of her costume back over her naked breasts. Suddenly the Spandex seemed a painfully flimsy protection, her aroused nipples making flagrant peaks against the mauve material.

  `Please,' she begged, her eyes misty, 'if you respect me, don't touch me anymore.'

  He stared at her, his expression unmistakably desirous. Àre you deliberately trying to drive me crazy?' he asked husk
ily. 'I want you, Sophie! Don't you know how I feel about you?'

  Ì know that I don't know you well enough to let you do this to me,' she replied, sitting up. Her mouth was dry with passion. 'Secondly, this isn't the time or place for what you feel, and thirdly, there's a little girl all alone over there—'

  'Emma's quite safe.' He tilted his head to kiss her mouth again, and she felt the world spin around her. `God, I want you,' he murmured, drawing her close.

  `Kyle, don't—'

  `You're so lovely,' he whispered raggedly. 'So slender and graceful, so cool and elusive ...' His hand was caressing her hip, the satiny skin of her thigh. 'From the moment I saw you, I've been burning for you. And I know you feel the same way, too.'

  `You don't know anything of the kind,' she retorted. But she had to speak between his kisses, and the blood was rushing in her veins, like molten gold being poured into a new mould, a new shape.

  Kyle's hand slid into the smooth coolness between her thighs, caressing the delicate skin, so close to the aching, melting centre of her need that the slightest movement would be fatal.

  His mouth claimed hers with hungry intensity, and then she felt his palm cup the mound of her woman-

  hood, only the soft material coming between his possessive touch and her arousal.

  Her eyes widened, her whole body tensing like a coiled spring at the feelings he was unleashing in her.

  Then she remembered Maisie. Before he could stop her, she slid away from him, rose to her slender, shaky legs, and ran down the moist sand to the sea.

  The warm water enveloped her, too warm and too salt to do much in the way of rinsing away her emotions, but at least she had escaped from the drowning maelstrom of Kyle's lovemaking.

  For the time being.

  Kyle followed her after a few moments, his magnificent face looking partly amused, partly frustrated. She was expecting some acid comment at the way she'd chickened out, but he didn't say anything to her, just swam beside her in silence until she was ready to get out again.

  `W e'd better set off,' he said, as they walked, both dripping, back to where Emma lay sleeping. 'It's a long drive back to Ocho Rios.'

  `Yes,' she said flatly.

  Àre you angry about what's just happened?' he asked, sliding a strong arm around her waist and pulling her close.

  `No,' Sophie said, rather tensely. 'But I don't want it to happen again.'

  Òh, Sophie,' he said, in mock reproof. 'You don't really think it's going to end there, do you?'

  She didn't answer him.

  But later, when she was alone, she could no longer pretend that it was all just a mischievous game anymore. She'd wanted to let Kyle's misconception about her run.

  She'd wanted to play some kind of joke on him, to sting him back for the way he had once stung her.

  Yet somehow it wasn't working out as simply and as neatly as she'd expected.

  Kyle wanted her. There was no doubt about it anymore. If her ambition was to be desired by the man who had once spurned her, she knew deep down that her wish was fulfilled.

  There ought to have been a delicious enjoyment in that. This was a man who had once ridiculed her infatuation with him. And today he had held her in his arms, and had wanted to make love to her, right there on the beach. If she'd wanted, she could have had him ... as her lover.

  Enjoyment? Yes, after a fashion.

  But there was pain, too. That old, sharp pain, reminding her so keenly of a certain evening in Brighton. The pain of feeling that he was only looking at her exterior. Only looking at her body. As though what lay inside her counted for nothing, as though all the feelings and emotions, the intelligence and the wit, were all irrelevant to looking good and dressing well.

  What was worse: being humiliated because of her appearance, or being desired for it?

  Damn him, she thought with quick hurt. Damn him for his triviality! If she'd once thought he cared about her, about what she was like inside, today would have been the happiest in her life, instead of a moment of acute, bittersweet irony.

  And .there were further problems. Mainly her own, that was. She ought to have known herself well enough to foresee just how deeply she would become enslaved by him.

  Enslaved? Yes. There was no other word.

  Sophie knew her own feelings. They ran deep and strong. Though she'd never committed herself to any man in the full physical sense, she'd always known that when she did fall in love with a man it would be forever. She'd always cherished the old-fashioned ambition of having, in the same man, her only lover, husband and partner through life.

  Maybe that was just the naive conservatism of her rural Yorkshire upbringing. But it was a part of her, and she

  felt with deep pain that she could never survive a casual affair, not with Kyle Hart.

  Kyle was by his own admission a roamer as far as women were concerned. He was hardly the forever kind.

  How could she be sure that their relationship had any prospects other than those of a pleasurable holiday romance, which would end, on his part, with no possibility of anything deeper or further? She could not. All that lay in front of her, as far as she could now see, was pain.

  What on earth was she going to do? She had already played this game for so long that it had gone too far to call the chips in.

  If she told him who she really was, could she be sure that he wouldn't reject her completely? The thought that he would react with fury, or with disgust, terrified her.

  That Scorpio temper was something to fear. She was no slavish adherent of astrology, but somehow Kyle fitted the Scorpio bill very well indeed. If he was true to the type, he

  would react badly to having been duped, and that sting in the tail could be fatal. She could either have told him who she was right at the very beginning, or—Or not tell him at all?

  The temptation was so strong. On the one side she risked losing Kyle forever. On the other, she had the prospect of two more weeks of certain heaven.

  Perhaps there was a way she could have her cake and eat it. If she could avoid a physical affair, if she could just keep it to the kind of happy friendship they'd had until this afternoon, then what harm was there in letting him remain ignorant about her identity?

  The decision was made. She wouldn't tell him. Not until the very end. Then, if he really cared about her, it would all work out. And if he didn't—well, she would have had her three weeks of heaven.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SOPHIE sat down at the dressing-table to put on her make-up, and stared at her own face in the mirror. The cool grey eyes looked back at her with a misty hint of melancholy, and the full, passionate mouth was touched with sadness.

  It was her last night in Jamaica.

  Three weeks of heaven had flown by so quickly, the happiest three weeks of her life.

  She had known love, excitement, had seen her most secret dream come true—that she would meet Kyle Hart again, and that he would be as attracted to her as he had once been repelled.

  He still didn't suspect a thing. He didn't even know she was going tomorrow. She hadn't told him

  Lying on her bed, her tan suitcases were almost completely packed, bright summer colours peeping out from under the lids. The cupboards and shelves were empty. The taxi was booked to take her to the airport at seven-thirty tomorrow morning; the hotel bill was paid; she'd rung London to ask Mrs Flanagan, her cleaning lady, to air and clean the flat for her arrival tomorrow night. Tomorrow night she would sleep in London, and all this would be just a dream. Including Kyle Hart.

  Everything had come to a focal point tonight.

  They'd spent so many beautiful days together, sometimes just lying on the beach, talking and laughing with the intimacy of lovers, sometimes exploring Jamaica together, Kyle's expertise about the island making him a fascinating guide.

  But they had never become lovers—not in the physical sense. She'd been so careful to avoid letting him kiss or caress her, knowing full well by now the devastating physical effect he coul
d have on her. Though she knew

  her reserve had frustrated him intensely, she had deliberately shied away from the sensual relationship she knew he wanted so badly. For that, at least, she was now profoundly grateful.

  She was wearing only a cotton wrap, and it had drifted aside to reveal the curves of her neat, high breasts, with their delicate tips.

  In the afternoon, on the beach, Kyle had asked her to have dinner with him tonight—not in the hotel, but in a restaurant in Kingston that he claimed was unmatchable—and she'd accepted.

  Her plans for tonight weren't definite. It was her last performance, though, and she was determined to play it to the hilt!

  She checked her watch. She'd sat here mooning so long that she was already running fifteen minutes late. If Kyle was on time, then he would be cooling his heels in the foyer already. Well, let him! A little waiting wouldn't hurt that massive male ego.

  Her face didn't need more than a touch of lip-gloss and a hint of eyeshadow to leap into glamorous definition. She darkened her lashes with mascara, and brushed her chestnut hair as vigorously as she could bear. Her hair was the only incomplete note; not in any definable style, it tended to become a glossy chaos of curls and waves. But it was not an unattractive chaos, and it would have to do.

  She touched her wrists and the valley between her naked breasts with a Giorgio Armani perfume, a fragrance she had discovered recently, and which captivated her with its mysterious seduction.

  Letting the wrap drift to the floor, she stepped into a pair of lacy silk briefs, pulling them up over her slender hips, then she lifted the dress off the chair where she'd left it.

  It was the only garment she had which was really suitable for an occasion like tonight.

  She'd bought it in Kingston a few days ago, knowing at the time that she

  would probably never wear it in London, but thinking of it as a souvenir. A plain black sarong dress in silk chiffon, it looked demure, apart from having no straps and leaving her tanned shoulders bare.