my only love. He was burning up with excitement, and he lifted his body so that he was lying on top of her completely. She was so soft and melting under him, and he moulded himself to her legs and her lovely breasts and her stomach. How perfectly she fitted under him and with him. He found her mouth with his own, so hungry and yearning, and crushed his lips to hers. And he thought he was going to explode.
Katharine was trapped unbearably under his weight, unable to move and terrified. I don’t want this. I don’t want it, a voice in her head screamed. I’ve got to make him stop. Oh my God what am I going to do? Now, to her immense horror, that warm and loving hand was touching her bare calf, stroking gently, and rising slowly to her knee under the robe. His hand lingered on her knee and progressed up her leg and then trailed across the inside of her upper thigh, where it lingered again, the tips of his fingers expertly tracing circles on her flesh, almost imperceptibly, so delicate was their touch. Katharine turned her head, trying to breathe, and then she strangled a cry of protest in her throat and she went cold all over. Kim’s hand was drifting across her stomach and moving down, ever so slowly down and she stiffened, holding her body taut.
Although she did not push him away from her, Katharine’s sudden and enormous coldness communicated itself to Kim. He was conscious of the unusual rigidity of her body, no longer pliable and yielding under his, nor quivering under his touch. He pulled his hand away hurriedly, as if he had been scalded, and after a moment he raised himself on one elbow. His eyes were baffled and questioning and he stared into her face, and his own was covered with hurt and confusion.
It took him a short while to recover his equilibrium, to throw off the shock of her emotional withdrawal and physical frigidity. At last he mumbled, his voice choked, ‘What’s wrong?’ And then he flushed deeply. ‘Don’t you want me to kiss you? To touch you? Are you off me?’
‘No. No, it’s not that,’ Katharine began and halted, alarmed by the anger trickling into his eyes. ‘I told you, I’m very tired, Kim, and anyway, I’m not a te –’
‘You don’t have to mention your tiredness again, for God’s sake! You’ve been rubbing it in all evening!’ Kim was beset by a terrible shaking and he jumped up, charged with rage. He reached for the packet of cigarettes on the coffee table, lit one swiftly and then strode over to the fireplace. He turned to face her, and said with unfamiliar coldness, ‘I don’t understand you any more, Katharine. You blow hot and cold at the drop of a hat. And it’s damned unnerving, to say the least!’
‘No, I don’t,’ Katharine said defensively, returning his icy stare. She got to her feet with swiftness, smoothed down her robe and positioned herself on the sofa.
‘Oh yes, you do,’ Kim retorted, his anger unabated. ‘When we’re with other people you’re sweet and loving and flirtatious and encouraging. But when we’re alone you’re as distant as Mount Everest and just as bloody chilly. Tonight I thought you were going to be different. A grave error! My God, you let me kiss you and fondle you, and you didn’t stop me. In fact, you returned my kisses, and, mistakenly it seems, I thought you returned my feelings as well. It certainly appeared so. Then inexplicably you turn into a block of ice,’ he finished furiously, the deep colour darkening on his face. ‘You’re not very fair, Katharine.’
She drew herself up on the sofa with some dignity, and adopted an injured air. ‘I started to say, a moment before, that I’m not a tease –’
‘But you are!’ Kim cut in with a hard laugh. ‘The way you dress and get yourself up, oh so alluringly, and then set out to entice. I’d say you’re a hell of a tease, my dear.’
Katharine glared at him, truly taken aback and also annoyed. ‘In that case, you can say all women are teases, simply because they’re women! What I meant was that I didn’t want to encourage you any more tonight, to get you … well, get you worked up and then leave you frustrated –’
‘But you did exactly that!’ he cried with indignation, interrupting her again. ‘Good Lord, Katharine, I’m not made of iron. I’m a man. How much do you think I can take of this heavy petting … without … fulfilment?’
Katharine leaned forward, a patient expression firmly in place, and said placatingly, with reasonableness, ‘Kim, that’s why I’ve been so very, very careful with you. You just said I’m not fair, but I believe I’ve been exceedingly fair, simply by not allowing our petting ever to go as far as it did tonight. Not ever in the past.’
‘Then why did you permit it this evening?’ he demanded. He was still furious with her, but the shaking had stopped, much to his relief.
This was the first time Kim had been angry or spoken one harsh word to her, and Katharine decided it would be far wiser to smooth his ruffled feathers rather than plunge into a long and complicated discussion about sex. Her eyes and her mouth smiled at him gently. ‘I didn’t really allow it. It just sort of … well … happened, and before I could stop it. I let things get out of hand, I suppose. Perhaps because I am so terribly tired. Not thinking clearly. And despite what you believe, these past few weeks have been difficult for me. I take the screen test very seriously,’ she continued, adopting a different tack to divert him. ‘It has put extra pressures on me. And frankly, today in particular has been quite rough. I had an important lunch, and then Norman dropped the bombshell, about Terry being sick. Also, there was the strain of tonight’s performance, and Norman’s –’
‘It strikes me you’re only tired and feeling the strain when you’re with me. Alone with me. And that’s another thing. Inviting Norman over here to talk about blasted antiques, when you knew we had this very special date! I could have given the same information to you to pass on to him or Terry quite easily, you know. And whilst we’re on the subject of other people, what’s so important about lunch with my sister?’
‘Didn’t Francesca tell you she’s going to adapt a scene from Wuthering Heights? For my screen test?’ she asked, ignoring the comment about Norman and making her voice sweet and melting, hoping to mollify him. She could hardly tell him the real reason for Norman’s presence in the flat, not without breaking a confidence and her promise. And that she would never do.
‘Yes, she did,’ Kim said edgily.
‘It was important to me, even if you don’t see it that way. I’m very grateful for Francesca’s help. And look, I’m sorry I upset you. I am, honestly.’
Kim was silent. He lit another cigarette, and then poured himself a glass of wine, stepping away from the coffee table and Katharine quickly. He positioned himself in front of the fireplace as before, his face set, a small pulse beating in his temple. He was still seething inside. His feelings of hurt, anger and frustration sprang, not unnaturally, from his disappointment, and the belief that she had wilfully led him on, only to finally reject him. Kim Cunningham was not accustomed to being rejected.
On the contrary, until he had met Katharine Tempest, he had been the pursued rather than the pursuer, for like his father, he was irresistibly attractive to women from all walks of life. For a young man not yet twenty-two he was remarkably experienced sexually and had a voracious appetite. Before the advent of Katharine in his life, he had had one involved love affair and a number of liaisons of lesser significance. His only involved relationship, until Katharine, had been with the German princess he had met on a skiing holiday in Königssee, when visiting his cousins Diana and Christian. Astrid, the lady in question, had been seven years his senior, twenty-six at the time, and married. It was the latter reason which had led the Earl to intervene, but only at the request of the irate husband. The prince had not taken too kindly to his younger wife’s dalliance with a nineteen-year-old ‘pup’, as he disparagingly termed Kim. Although the Earl had immediately articulated his annoyance to Kim and insisted the affair end, he had been amused. He was also patently aware it was merely a passing fancy on the part of the princess, who had married a fortune she had no intention of forgoing, and therefore in no way represented a threat to his son.
Kim thought of Astrid now. She had been so warm and loving and passionate, and it was she who had awakened his latent sensuality, the voluptuousness that lay hidden behind his contained and reserved façade. It was