Too Wise To Wed?

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Yes, off,’ Kyle said encouragingly as he gently but firmly turned her over and bent his head to kiss her gently, but not so gently that the effect didn’t ricochet, rampaging from one end of her body to the other, Star noted in despair as she tried to resist what was happening to her. But how could she resist when, instead of assisting her, Kyle was just making the situation worse by continuing to kiss her?

  She tried to say as much but the movement of her lips as she tried to form the words somehow or other gave Kyle the idea that she actually wanted him to continue kissing her and in the end it was simply easier to be acquiescent—easier and oh, so very much more pleasurable.

  Kyle was still stroking her skin but his touch was very definitely a sensual and deliberately erotic caress now.

  ‘Have you any idea what you’ve just been doing to me, how much you’ve been turning me on?’ he whispered into her mouth as he opened it with his tongue.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Star moaned back feelingly, her whole body shuddering with delight as his open palm slid over her breast, the tip of his thumb rubbing tormentingly against her nipple.

  ‘Mmm...you taste so good,’ she heard him telling her appreciatively as he nuzzled his way down over her throat and between her breasts.

  ‘So good,’ he repeated far more hoarsely as his tongue circled her navel and her towel was removed.

  Star had thought of herself as sexually sophisticated but there was nothing sophisticated about the way she was reacting now, she recognised—about the way her whole body, but most especially her thighs, had started to tremble, about the sensations and emotions that gripped her as she felt Kyle’s mouth open and move down over her body.

  Such intimacies...such emotions surely belonged to true lovers and should be exclusively their domain but there was no denying her need to respond to and reciprocate the intimacy of Kyle’s lingering oral caress.

  Helplessly, she reached out to him.

  For a moment she thought that he either didn’t truly comprehend or didn’t want to respond to her own need but after a second’s hesitation he removed his briefs and watched her, his expression unreadable as she moved her body and then bent her head towards him.

  He felt hard, powerfully hard to the touch and yet at the same time very humanly vulnerable. He didn’t move but Star was aware of his quick indrawn breath as she placed her lips against his thigh and slowly started caressing him.

  She wasn’t sure which of them shuddered more deeply when she finally touched him with her tongue, delicately rimming a circle around him, but she knew that her own reaction to the feel and taste of him was so intimately powerful and explosive that she could actually feel her body tightening in sensual urgency.

  ‘Star!’

  The hoarse sound of her name was enough to make her pause and look at him. His face was slightly flushed, a dark burn of colour highlighting his cheekbones and his eyes. Star trembled, as shaky as a newborn colt, when she saw the look in his eyes.

  ‘I want you,’ she told him helplessly, unable to stop herself from responding vocally to the look he had given her.

  ‘Nowhere near as much as I want you,’ he retorted fiercely. ‘Nowhere near as much.’

  She had always known instinctively that there would be strength and power in those arms, in that body—but what she had not guessed was that that strength would empower her and allow her, for the first time in her life, actually to enjoy her own vulnerability, to feel that it was safe for her to allow someone else to take control, to know that she could trust him...that she was safe with him...

  She cried out to him when he eventually entered her, unaware of what she said, unaware of having told him that she loved him, unaware of anything other than the almost violent surge of pleasure that engulfed her as the tight circle of her need snapped.

  Star had known physical pleasure before but she had never known this emotional completeness, never known such overwhelming joy in the aftermath of any previous intimacy, never wanted to hold and be held by any previous partner the way she did with Kyle.

  But then she had never loved anyone as she did him, had she...? She had never loved anyone at all...until now... Until Kyle.

  Star woke up in the middle of the night suddenly and sharply aware that Kyle was no longer there in bed with her. Her eyes searched for him in the darkness and found him, standing motionless in front of the window, his head bent, his expression sombre and almost brooding. In a flash Star guessed what was wrong, what must be on his mind. Her love for him overwhelmed her. Immediately, she got out of bed and padded over to him, touching him gently on the arm.

  ‘Kyle...’

  He looked silently down at her.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she told him, ‘but it...it isn’t like you think... I wasn’t... I didn’t...’

  She took a deep breath, her voice soft with emotion as she told him, ‘You haven’t really broken your vow...about not having sex with someone but only making love... Not really.’ She paused; this was so very difficult for her. Her pride alone was enough of an obstacle to overcome, never mind the fact that she was stripping away her defences and allowing Kyle to see her so nakedly vulnerable. She could see that he was frowning.

  ‘Star...’ he began, but she placed her fingers over his lips and gave him a look that was both fiercely determined and touchingly appealing.

  ‘No...please let me finish,’ she begged. ‘This isn’t easy for me. It goes against everything I’ve always believed in, everything I’ve always said and done, but I can’t let you think—’ She stopped and swallowed and then said huskily, ‘It just wouldn’t be fair... It wasn’t just sex,’ she told him bravely. ‘What we did...what we shared,’ she emphasised, ‘was...’ She swallowed again, moistening her nervously dry lips. ‘We did make love with emotion and involvement,’ she told him, looking down at the floor, unable to look directly at him any longer. ‘At least I—’

  She stopped.

  ‘You what?’ Kyle challenged her sharply, his voice sounding slightly rusty—probably because he was feeling so bad about what had happened, Star decided sympathetically. It was still such a new emotion to her, this sense of feeling for someone else, of wanting—no, needing—to put him first, to put his happiness above her own.

  ‘I made love,’ she told him firmly, finally managing to lift her head and look squarely at him. ‘I...I made love and I—Kyle, Kyle...what are you doing?’ she protested as he suddenly swooped and picked her up in his arms.

  ‘What am I doing?’ he repeated, his eyes and his mouth warm with laughter and with something else as well, Star recognised as her heart suddenly started to bounce against her chest wall like a rubber ball on elastic. ‘What I am doing,’ he said, ‘is taking you back to bed where I fully intend to keep you until I get a verbal repetition of that statement you just made and where I intend, as well, to give you my own response to it, both vocal and physical.

  ‘Now tell me again,’ he demanded as he lowered her onto the bed and gently but firmly held her there.

  ‘Tell you what?’ Star queried, tongue-in-cheek.

  ‘Tell me,’ Kyle insisted between deliciously erotic kisses, ‘what you know damn well I want to hear.’

  ‘That I made love?’ Star repeated huskily, keeping her gaze fixed on him. ‘That we didn’t just have sex? That for me that—?’

  ‘No,’ Kyle corrected her softly. ‘We made love. This time and every time,’ he promised her. ‘And the reason we made love is because we do love... I love you and...’

  ‘I love you,’ Star whispered shakily to him. ‘Kyle, I love you,’ she repeated, reaching out to shake his shoulder as she tried to communicate her own sense of wonder and awe at what she had so recently discovered.

  Kyle watched her indulgently before pulling her into his arms and telling her provocatively, ‘I know you do... I knew it all along.’

  ‘You...you what...?’ Star tried to protest, but Kyle took the expedient measure of silencing her by kissing her and k
issing her...and kissing her.

  Star snuggled closer to him.

  ‘Mmm...’

  ‘Mmm...’ Kyle agreed as he lowered her back against the bed.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘AND to think that if I hadn’t told you the night of Emily’s wedding that it wasn’t, at least on my part, just sex between us—because I hated to see you looking so...down, because I realised that my love for you was far, far stronger than my need to win and make you think that I’d triumphed because you’d broken your vow—none of this would have happened,’ Star told her husband lovingly as she reached up and kissed him.

  They had been married very quietly earlier in the day—a church ceremony with only their closest friends present. Sally, bloomingly pregnant and joyously happy, had escorted Star down the aisle in lieu of her father—Star’s own decision. She had explained to her father that in view of their complicated family history and the fact that not all of Kyle’s family could fly over for the ceremony they had decided against an ultra-traditional wedding.

  Her mother had been there, with Brian, and so had Brad and Claire. Her father, characteristically, had sulked and announced that he would not be able to attend as a mere guest since he and the family were going away on holiday.

  ‘Don’t let it hurt you,’ Kyle had told her gently when she had read her father’s letter.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ Star had responded simply and truthfully. ‘He is still my father and always will be, but I see him differently now; I see him as he is and not as I want him to be, thanks to you. It doesn’t hurt any more, Kyle,’ she assured him. ‘You have healed all my hurts.’

  Emily and David had also been at the wedding. A friendship, a closeness that Star could never have envisaged existing even as short a time as twelve months ago had developed between her and her stepsister.

  Sally and Star’s friendship had strengthened and deepened too and Sally had already intimated that she wanted Star to be godmother to her soon-to-arrive baby.

  ‘I can’t promise to be a traditional wife and mother like Claire and Poppy,’ Star had warned Kyle the night before the wedding. ‘I can’t change the person I am.’

  ‘Star, I don’t want you to change,’ Kyle had told her firmly. ‘I fell in love with you as you are. I love you as you are,’ he had stressed.

  Now, in the privacy of their honeymoon-suite bedroom, listening to her reflecting on that all-important night they had spent together, Kyle started to laugh.

  ‘What are you laughing for?’ Star demanded.

  ‘I don’t think I dare tell you. Not until after we’ve consummated our marriage; that way at least you’ll have to wait to divorce me instead of merely getting an annulment...’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Star asked warily. By now she knew all about his quirky sense of humour and how much he enjoyed teasing her.

  ‘That night you’re talking about,’ he told her more seriously, ‘I wasn’t brooding about the possibility that I might have broken any promises to myself...’

  ‘Yes, you were,’ Star insisted. ‘I could see it in your face. You looked so...so sad, so despondent and I knew what you must be thinking. I knew how important your insistence on not having sex without love was to you.’

  ‘Yes, it was important,’ Kyle agreed candidly. ‘But never anywhere near as important as you. And besides,’ he added softly, taking her in his arms, ‘I already knew that we had made love and not merely had sex...’

  ‘What?’ Star struggled to break free of him as she glared up at him. ‘How could you possibly have known that? Even I—’

  ‘You told me,’ Kyle interrupted her gently. ‘You told me when I was loving you how much you cared, how much you needed me...how much you loved me...’

  ‘Did I?’ Star looked uncertainly at him, inwardly digesting what she had just learnt. ‘Oh,’ she said, and then added, ‘So there was no need for me to... I didn’t have to... I could have...’

  ‘There was no need,’ Kyle agreed. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t and don’t appreciate what you did and said, my darling, nor that I don’t realise how difficult it must have been for you to overcome all those inbuilt prejudices and fears.’

  He bent his head and kissed her and then withdrew his mouth a breath away from hers as she struggled to speak.

  ‘Well, if you weren’t looking so unhappy about that, then what was bothering you?’ she asked him curiously.

  ‘You,’ he came back promptly. ‘You might have told me you loved me in the heat of the moment, so to speak, but I knew how much you’d hate revealing something which you would see as vulnerability and how much you’d resent me for being the cause of it. I didn’t just want your loving...your love in bed physically...I wanted it wholly and completely and I wanted you to want me in the same way. If I looked despairing it was because I was wondering just how the hell I was going to achieve that kind of miracle, and then you solved the problem for me...’

  Just before he bent his head to resume kissing her, his attention was caught by something on the small table next to them. He reached out and picked it up, holding it out to Star for her inspection as he whispered in her ear, ‘It’s the room-service menu. It’s got sea-bass on it. Want some?’

  ‘Hmm... I’m not so sure... Perhaps I should just have a taste of yours,’ she responded provocatively.

  They were both laughing as Kyle picked her up and carried her towards the bed.

  The bouquet arrived with the room-service waiter and the sea-bass. Attached to it was a small card on which Sally had drawn a small cartoon character punching the air in triumph and written the words, ‘Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!’

  Laughing helplessly, Star showed it to Kyle.‘Strange things, these old superstitions,’ Kyle told her, his words muffled through their shared kiss. ‘It doesn’t do to treat them lightly or to mock them. You just never know what might happen.’

  ‘No,’ Star murmured back happily, ‘but I think I know what’s going to happen now!’

  Here’s a sneak peak at

  Colleen Collins’s RIGHT CHEST, WRONG NAME

  Available August 1997...

  “DARLING, YOU SOUND like a broken cappuccino machine,” murmured Charlotte, her voice oozing disapproval.

  Russell juggled the receiver while attempting to sit up in bed, but couldn’t. If he sounded like a wreck over the phone, he could only imagine what he looked like.

  “What mischief did you and your friends get into at your bachelor’s party last night?” she continued.

  She always had a way of saying “your friends” as though they were a pack of degenerate water buffalo. Professors deserved to be several notches higher up on the food chain, he thought. Which he would have said if his tongue wasn’t swollen to twice its size.

  “You didn’t do anything...bad...did you, Russell?”

  “Bad.” His laugh came out like a bark.

  “Bad as in naughty.”

  He heard her piqued tone but knew she’d never admit to such a base emotion as jealousy. Charlotte Maday, the woman he was to wed in a week, came from a family who bled blue. Exhibiting raw emotion was akin to burping in public.

  After agreeing to be at her parents’ pool party by noon, he untangled himself from the bed sheets and stumbled to the bathroom.

  “Pool party,” he reminded himself. He’d put on his best front and accommodate Char’s request. Make the family rounds, exchange a few pleasantries, play the role she liked best: the erudite, cultured English literature professor. After fulfilling his duties, he’d slink into some lawn chair, preferably one in the shade, and nurse his hangover.

  He tossed back a few aspirin and splashed cold water on his face. Grappling for a towel, he squinted into the mirror.

  Then he jerked upright and stared at his reflection, blinking back drops of water. “Good Lord. They stuck me in a wind tunnel.”

  His hair, usually neatly parted and combed, sprang from his head as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Can too many Wild Turkeys
do that?” he asked himself as he stared with horror at his reflection.

  Something caught his eye in the mirror. Russell’s gaze dropped.

  “What in the—”

  Over his pectoral muscle was a small patch of white. A bandage. Gingerly, he pulled it off.

  Underneath, on his skin, was not a wound but a small, neat drawing.

  “A red heart?” His voice cracked on the word heart. Something—a word?—was scrawled across it.

  “Good Lord,” he croaked. “I got a tattoo. A heart tattoo with the name Liz on it.”

  Not Charlotte. Liz!

  ISBN : 978-1-4592-6911-8

  TOO WISE TO WED?

  First North American Publication 1997.

  Copyright © 1996 by Penny Jordan.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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