Casualty Of Passion. Sharon Kendrick

Hartley. Kelly—this is Mary. She lives here and provides food to die for.’

      But Kelly knew instantly from his proprietorial tone that Mary ‘lived’ here purely in the capacity of staff. She felt somehow betrayed. They had shared intimacies, swopped secrets—and yet he had left out something as fundamental as the fact that he was a member of the flaming aristocracy! Her cheeks were hot with anger, but she managed to keep her voice relatively calm. ‘Thank you very much for lunch,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ll leave you to it—you’re obviously terribly busy.’

      ‘Kelly—’ he began, but Kelly had jumped out of the car and run past the staring group and upstairs to her room before he could say anything more, or stop her.

      And when the peremptory knock came on her door about half an hour later, she was not surprised, though she was tempted not to answer it.

      She pulled the door open to find Randall leaning with languid grace against the door-frame, his grey eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you angry?’ he asked calmly.

      ‘Why do you think?’

      ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking.’

      ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me that you were a lord?’ she demanded.

      ‘Oh, that,’ he said casually.

      ‘Yes, that!’ she retorted. ‘I suppose that you actually own this house too?’

      He shrugged. ‘Guilty as charged. Although on a technical point, I won’t actually own it until my father dies.’

      ‘Damn you and your technical point!’ she fired back. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

      He came inside, closed the door firmly behind him and took her by the shoulders. ‘Because I didn’t want you to know. Not then.’

      Kelly’s eyes widened. ‘Why ever not?’

      ‘Because people can be intimidated by the title, and I suspected that you might be one of them.’

      She took a step back. ‘Why, of all the most patronising—’

      ‘And because sometimes the baggage which comes with all that stuff,’ he interrupted coolly, ‘just gets in the way of what really matters ... you know?’

      She shook her head, angry and confused. ‘No, I don’t know.’

      ‘Yes, you do,’ he said softly, and bent his head to kiss her. ‘Of course you do.’

      After that Kelly spent every moment she could with him, and for the first time in her life found it difficult to concentrate on her studies. He had put her in his tutorial group, and she really had to make an effort not to run her gaze dreamily over every glorious inch of his body, and to listen instead to his lectures, which she wasn’t at all surprised to discover were absolutely brilliant.

      Randall was the undisputed star of the course, and it was pretty obvious that every girl fancied him like mad, but he seemed to have eyes only for Kelly. At the end of each day’s session he would take her off somewhere in his little sports car and they would walk for miles, arriving back only just in time for dinner.

      ‘Should you be leaving them alone like this?’ Kelly asked him, as the little sports car came to a halt and she tried to drag the brush through her tangled hair.

      He smiled. ‘Relax. There’s plenty for them to do—I’m not playing nanny to them. Now come here and kiss me before we go inside.’

      Kelly was quite certain that she was in love with him. But it was more than just the completely overwhelming physical attraction she had been aware of from the very beginning, because he gave her a great sense of her own worth for her intellect, as well as a woman.

      Thoughts of him disturbed her nights, and she tossed restlessly as she relived how his amazing grey eyes would darken with passion every time he took her into his arms. She suspected that she would willingly have gone to bed with him, except that he behaved with a restraint which she found admirable, given that even with her total inexperience she recognised just how much he wanted her.

      And then came that last evening.

      First there was dinner, cooked as usual by Mary, and then someone had laughingly suggested charades. So they all filed into the room which was known as the red library, but after a time Randall took her by the hand and led her quietly from the room. She didn’t know whether anyone noticed that they had left, and, aware that she was leaving the following day, she no longer cared. Silently she went up the staircase with him, her heart beating like a wild thing when he led her straight to her bedroom and closed the door quietly behind them.

      He stared at her for a long, long moment. ‘I’m going to miss you, Kelly,’ he said softly. ‘Very, very much.’

      She could have drowned in the intensity of that silver-grey stare. ‘Are you?’ she whispered.

      ‘More than you could ever imagine.’ He took her into his arms, his face dark and unreadable, the light from the moon emphasising the aristocratic cheekbones, the sculptured perfection of his mouth. He bent his face so that it was very close to hers. ‘And I want to see you again—you know that, don’t you?’

      Kelly nodded silently, shaken by the fervour in his voice, which matched some spark deep in her soul. She wound her arms around his neck, and her body seemed to melt into the hard sinews of his, her unspoken surrender apparent in the kiss she returned so sweetly.

      He gave a low moan as he ran his hands through the thick, silken texture of her hair, then let them fall to her waist, to gather her in even closer, so that they were moulded together and she never wanted to let him go. Never, never, never.

      Her breasts tingled as he stroked them over the cotton of the simple white dress she wore, and she gave a little sigh, her eyes closing as she felt the warm river of desire flood her veins with sweet potency.

      Still kissing her, he slid the zip of her dress down and she let her arms drop to her sides so that it glided down over her hips and pooled on the ground around her feet. He raised his head then, his eyes narrowed as they studied her. Her breasts were so small that she wore no bra, and she was clad only in the smallest pair of bikini briefs, her body silvered by the pale light of the moon, the thick waves of her hair tumbling down over her small, high breasts. Suffused with love and longing for him, Kelly felt exultant as she saw the expression on his face as his gaze slowly covered every inch of her, filled with an elemental and very feminine fire as she revelled in the power of her body, that she could inspire that look of ardour on his face.

      ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told her. His voice sounded unsteady, almost slurred with desire, as he started to unbutton his shirt, letting it fall to the ground as carelessly as her dress had done.

      ‘So are you,’ she whispered, and she heard him give a low laugh as his hand moved to the belt of his trousers.

      Kelly felt shy at her first sight of his arousal, almost dazed and daunted by her ability to do that to him, but her shyness evaporated as he slid her tiny bikini pants down over her thighs, then, naked, pulled her down on to the bed with him and began to kiss her over and over again.

      It felt so good. It felt so right. She was drowning in delight, each touch and each kiss making the pleasure escalate until she could hardly bear it any more, almost going out of her mind when his hand moved over the flatness of her belly, to teasingly stroke tiny provocative circles there. She began to move restlessly, and he gave another low laugh as his hand slid down between her thighs to tantalise her even further so that she made an instinctive little pleading sound at the back of her throat.

      ‘Do you want me?’ he whispered huskily.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ she shuddered ecstatically as he stroked her skilfully.

      ‘Really want me?’

      ‘Yes!’ Oh, God, yes—more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.

      He moved to lie on top of her. She was