Passionate Choice

Chapter 4.9

   "That was lovely," Selena murmured as she sat down on the sand beside Keith who, as naked as he had been when swimming, was lying prone on his opened out shirt, his head resting in his folded arms. Droplets if water, reflecting the sunlight, spangled his hair. He didn't answer her.

   In the golden light of the westering sun, his skin looked bronze. She admired the symmetrical shape of his torso, he broad swimmer's shoulders tapering to the waist and wondered what he would do if she touched him, stroked her hand over the pads of muscle under the gleaming skin and down his spine. The thought of caressing him rekindled the flame of desire within her. It flared up painfully, seeming to scorch through her.

   'Keith,' she wanted to say, 'oh, Keith, do you remember when we used to swim and make love afterwards? I wish we could do that again. I wish we could have that time again.'

   But she said nothing of of what she thought. She had less control, however, over her actions than she had over her speech. Her hand went out and touched his shoulder, fingers spreading out over it. He turned his head, looked round at her, his slitted blue glance raking her bare body, also gilded by sunlight to pale gold. With a growler oath, he reached up an arm and pulled her down beside him.

   The coarse sand grazed her fine skin but she didn't are because his mouth, hot and hungry, was covering hers. It had come. That moment of delight she had longed for. Parting her lips to the pressure of his, she slid her hands into his hair and, moving her body against his temptingly, let go the last remnant of control, her mind reeling under the onslaught of her own desire.

   Then, quite rudely, she was shocked out of the tender, sensual mood. His hands instead of holding her and caressing her were pushing her away from him and his lips had gone from hers wrenched away brutally. He sprang to his feet and left her lying on the sand, abandoned like a piece of debris washed up by the tide and left high and dry, her desires unfulfilled.

   Feeling shattered by his sudden desertion of her, she sat up, clasping her arms about her breasts, wondering if perhaps he had heard someone coming. But there was no one else on the beach. The cove was still empty, sunlit and silent, the sand gleaming gold, the water glinting turquoise.

   Fully dressed in shirt and shorts, Keith steed out of the trees. He didn't come towards her, only called to her.

   "Hurry up and get dressed," he ordered roughly. "It's past four o'clock. Time we went back. Heather will start getting suspicious."

   Swinging away from her, he walked into the bush. Bewildered by his coldness, she dressed quickly and followed him. Soon they were seated side by side in the truck as it sped over the rough road.

   She wanted to ask him what had gone wrong, why he had withdrawn from her so cruelly at the moment when passion had been red hot between them and culmination so close. But pride forbade that she should ask is she waited for him to speak and make some sort of explanation.

   He didn't speak and they drove on in silence through the village and out on to the road to the resort. It was a silence that vibrated with tension, with all their unspoken thoughts and all their churned-Up emotions. Yet not until the truck had been parked in the driveway of the resort and they were both walking away from it was Selena able to force herself to question him, breaking through the barrier of her pride.

   "Why, Keith, why did you withdraw like that?" she whispered.

   He turned to face her. His face, gilded by sunlight, looked like a masked beaten from bronze.

   "You really want to know?" He queried.

   "Yes, I do. You were so violent." Her voice shook a little. "It hurt."

   "It was meant to," he said nastily. "I don't like being used."

   "I don't understand."

   "Don't you?" His eyes were as empty and cold as Arctic seas. "You were using me. You're sex-starved, Selena, darling. And what you can't get from your dried-up professor, you were hoping you could get from me, for old times' sake."

   "I'm not... I wasn't... I don't..." she spluttered, appalled by what he had just said about her, denials tumbling out of her furiously as she glared at his mocking face through a red haze of outrage. "I don't know how you can accuse me of being what you say I am. You didn't have to pull me down beside you on to the sand. You didn't have to kiss me or... or touch me," she went in more coherently in a low, angry voice.

   "No, I didn't have to. And maybe that's why I stopped when I realized what you were doing," he retorted through tight lips. "You're a cheat, Selena, and I don't much care for cheats. You're going to marry Ben, yet this afternoon you wanted me to make love to you. That's cheating." He drew his right hand from the pocket of his shorts and dangled the keys of the truck before her. "You might give this to Heather, when you see her and thank her for the use of the truck," he added coolly.

   She took the keys from him without a word ad standing as if turned to stone, stunned by his last accusation, she watched him walk away through the trees.