Best Man To Wed?. Penny Jordan

she tried to turn her head out of the way, panic flooding her body with a trembling agitation and a desperate need to break free, but James forestalled her, one hand still binding her firmly against his body whilst the other grasped a handful of her hair, twisting it through his fingers, and then cupped her jaw, imprisoning her beneath the growing pressure of a kiss that was making her feel increasingly vulnerable.

      She could feel the strength in his fingers where they rested against her skin, their touch cool in marked contrast to the burning heat of her own flushed face, just as the steady thud of his heartbeat underlined the wretchedly fast race of her own.

      She knew, shamingly, that she was trembling from head to foot, and she knew, even more humiliatingly, that James must know it too. She could feel his fingers sliding along her throat, stroking her skin gently... gently ... James.

      Tears blurred her vision, burning behind the eyelids she refused to close as she glared her enmity into the cool, clear aqua of James’s unreadable eyes.

      All these years of dreaming of Chris kissing her, Chris holding her, Chris’s mouth caressing and possessing hers, and now it had to be James who was turning what should have been one of the most treasured moments of her life into a mocking parody of everything that her first kiss of real passion should have been.

      Was it really for this that she had refused dates and explorative teenage snogging sessions? Was it for this that she had held aloof from the sexual freedom that university could have afforded her? Was it for this that she had spent her nights and some of her days dreaming and yearning...? So that James could mock her and destroy her cherished fantasies with a cruel kiss that could only be designed to taunt her—a kiss that...?

      Poppy stiffened as her brain belatedly recognised something that her traitorous senses had shamingly already seemed to acknowledge—namely that if it hadn’t actually been James, her loathed elder cousin, whose mouth was caressing hers she might almost...could almost....

      Poppy gave an outraged gasp as she realised just why her lips, her mouth, seemed to be softening, yielding, almost enjoying the sensual contact with James’s, her eyes snapping fire when she registered the sudden, heart-stopping gleam darkening James’s as he finally lifted his mouth from hers.

      Her legs felt oddly weak as she stepped back from him, Poppy recognised dizzily—and not just her legs either.

      ‘Well, whoever he was, if indeed he did actually exist,’ she heard James saying derisively to her, ‘he wasn’t a very good teacher. Either that or...’

      ‘Or what?’ Poppy recovered just enough to challenge him. ‘I wasn’t a very good pupil...?’

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’

      Poppy stared at him, caught between disbelief and suspicion, waiting for the taunting barb that she was sure was to come, but instead he simply stood there whilst her gaze dropped helplessly from his eyes to his mouth—in fact it might have been jerked there on strings which he controlled, so little ability did she have to stop its betraying movement.

      ‘Yes?’ she heard James murmur invitingly.

      ‘Give me back my photograph,’ Poppy demanded huskily, determinedly forcing her gaze back to his eyes, hoping that he would put the hot colour burning her face down to the heat of her bonfire.

      But, instead of acceding to her demand, to her disbelief James tore the photograph—her precious photograph—into small pieces and then casually walked over to the now dying bonfire and dropped them into its burning embers.

      ‘You had no right to do that,’ Poppy protested chokily. ‘That...’

      ‘What else did you intend to do with it?’ James asked her. ‘It’s over, Poppy. Chris is married now. Accept it; he never loved you and he never will,’ he told her cruelly.

      ‘How dare you—’ she began.

      But he stopped her, continuing bluntly, ‘And it’s time you grew up and accepted the truth instead of living in an adolescent fantasy world.’

      He had started to walk away from her, to Poppy’s relief. Seeing him tear up her precious photograph and consign it to the bonfire had brought back all her earlier misery and despair and she knew that. tears weren’t very far away. She had humiliated herself enough without James seeing her cry.

      He paused and she tensed as he turned round to look at her.

      ‘Don’t forget,’ he warned her, ‘I’ll pick you up at six-thirty on Wednesday morning. Don’t be late...’