The Ultimate Choice

Kelly faltered to a standstill a few paces short of him, sensing a resistance so deep that it seemed foolhardy to go on. She actually felt a prickle of danger at the back of her neck. But she ignored the warning signals.

'Because I want to,' she said with direct simplicity. 'And I don't believe you like suffering pain.'

'No.' His eyes burned at her with a brief, turbulent glitter. 'No!' he repeated with more vehemence, then wrenched his gaze from hers, lifting it beyond her, fixing it with seemingly anguished obsession on the portrait of Noni.

Kelly was left hanging in a vacuum, shut out by him but with nowhere to go. Positive action was the only answer her bewildered mind threw up, and she stepped forward and touched his arm in an attempt to force his attention back to her.

'Why won't you let me help you?'

His eyes stabbed down with glittering savagery. 'Because you're a child! A child who has cost me too much already!'

His voice was shocking in its harsh brutality. There was almost hatred in his tone. Certainly bitterness… of a cup that had filled to the brim and overflowed.

She stared up at him, transfixed by something she didn't understand. Intuitively she was aware that he knew something she didn't… and the knowledge was an old, old agony that washed through him as he stared blindly into her eyes, not seeing the woman she was, but something or someone else. And her heart twisted with an unfamiliar fear.

He was virtually a stranger. How could he know something about her that she didn't know? Why did she feel tied to him by something she didn't understand? Yet the feeling was there, binding them together. And when he lifted his hand and touched her face…it did not feel like the hand of a stranger.

A muscle in his jaw contracted. He removed his hand from her cheek and clenched it into a fist before slowly dropping it to his side. The tight, shuttered look came back to his face, closing in all vestige of emotion, and he turned away from her, leaning heavily on his walking-stick as he made his way to the closest armchair. He clutched the backrest as if he needed extra support.

'Would you please leave? I don't wish to be unkind, but I really don't want you here, Kelly,' he said quietly, his voice very flat and controlled.

'Somehow I frighten you, don't I?' she blurted out, speaking from instinct rather than any reason she could think of.

'Yes, you frighten me.' He laughed harshly, and his voice broke into bitter mockery, mouthing words that lashed himself more than her. 'You frighten me very much. Think… if you wish… that I'm running away from you. It's close enough to the truth. The further you are from me, the better. So go away. Go home. Leave me to my own devices.'

'I've never run from anything in my life,' Kelly said stubbornly. 'And I'm not starting now.'

'Well…' He rolled the word out grimly as he turned back to her, and the barely controlled ferocity of his expression made Kelly's heart flutter with apprehension. '…let's see if this doesn't frighten you as much as it does me.'

He tossed his walking-stick aside as if it was no longer of any account. He took her wrist and pulled her into an embrace that crushed her body against his. Kelly was so stunned by the unexpected action that his fingers had thrust through her hair and dragged her head back before she could catch her breath, let alone begin to protest or even think to resist his formidable strength.

As he bent his head purposefully towards hers, the look of startled vulnerability in her eyes gave Justin St John a moment's anguished pause, and he cursed himself for a fool. He had wanted to kiss her roughly, hurt and intimidate her, so that she would cease this mad confrontation and leave him alone in his world of pain. Give to her some of what she had made him feel.

But she was innocent of any wrong to him. It had been his choice. His! She didn't know- couldn't know-what hell she wrought, simply with her presence. She had been too young. She would always be too young. Her lips were quivering.

Just this once. Just this once, he promised himself. I'll give in to the temptation to kiss her just this once, and I swear I'll never touch her again. I'll send her away and make sure she stays away. But just this once…

Kelly's heart was thumping chaotically. She was barely aware of his hold on her gentling. He was going to kiss her. She felt his lips seal lightly against her own. Surprise and relief swept away the fear that had gripped her stomach. It wasn't a hostile kiss. For some inexplicable reason his intention had changed, and Kelly sensed she had won a major victory.

A warm pleasure rippled through her. The beguiling sensuality of his lips brushing over hers, the tantalising changes of pressure, the heightened awareness of the feel of his body against hers- Kelly surrendered without a moment's thought to what he was doing to her, and felt a heady glow of something wonderful, super-charged, an infinity of dazzling possibilities.

He stirred slightly, as if to pull away. She felt the hardening of his body, knew she was exciting him, and revelled in it. She moved one of her hands up to curl around his head and hold him still so she could keep savouring the tingling sensuality of his kiss. But it changed with her willing encouragement, grew more demanding with her eager response, passionate, hungry for all she would give him.

She pressed closer, excitingly aware of the growing sensitivity in her breasts as they softened against the unyielding wall of his chest. His arms tightened around her, pulling her even closer. She felt every muscle in his body tighten in need, and was deliciously relaxed herself, giving, melting into him.

In sheer wanton bliss she opened her mouth to his, and exulted in the wildly erotic invasion of his tongue, her senses aflame with a desire she had never experienced before, a need for more and more sensation, intimacy, knowledge, power…all of him!

His mouth wrenched away from hers with shocking abruptness. A guttural expression of repugnance was expelled on a long, ragged breath. He grasped her upper arms and pushed her from him, forcibly holding her away from any contact with his body. And, while she was still dazed and quivering from the needs that he had aroused, he shocked her even further with the cold, deliberate savagery of a verbal rejection.

'That's where it ends! You've been taught a lesson. Now go home, little girl. You're out of your depth with me. And always will be.'

He moved back to arm's length before he finally released her, and the look on his face was that of a condemned man who was seeing the world for the last time.

As shaken as she was, Kelly defiantly stood her ground. No way was she going to turn tail and run at his command! Nor was he g

oing to frighten her with his assumed violence, or browbeat her in any way. He could not deny what had just passed between them. And it had been the same for him as it had for her. She knew it!

A film of tears lent a piercing brilliance to her green eyes, stabbing him with wounded but unremitting pride. 'I've just proved I'm not a little girl. And I'm not a child. If you can't handle the fact that I'm a woman, that's OK with me. But let's not get the insults the wrong way around. Are you man enough for me?'