Passionate Choice

Chapter 6.8

   "Did you find any artefacts best that wreck?" Selena asked.

   "Yes, I did." Keith sat up and took something from the pocket of his swimming trunks. Lifting her left hand from her knee, he slipped something over it and pushed it over her wrist and up her arm. It was a tarnished bracelet, two broad bands of silver joined together. "I thought it might look good on you with a little cleaning up," he said. "I found this also." He held to a gold ring between thumb and finger and then slid it in to the third finger of her left hand. "It's a wedding ring," he said softly.

   The blood burned suddenly in her cheeks. With her head bent so that he couldn't see her face, she pushed the bracelet up her arm, admiring the elegance of it. The ring on her finger was a heavy and unfamiliar weight.

   "They just have been among the loot," Keith went on. "And they must have come from a ship in which women were traveling. There were no women on the Pelican. They are the only bits of treasure I've found. I'd like you to have them, Selena. In remembrance."

   "Remembrance of what?" She looked up in surprise and found him very close, one sun-tanned knee pressing into her bare thigh, flames of desire blazing blue in his eyes.

   "Our finding each other again. Our being cast up on a deserted tropical beach for an hour or two," he murmured.

   His hand culled her chin and she watched his face with its wickedly slanting eyebrows, its clean cut piratical features coming closer. It was inevitable that this should happen once they found themselves alone again, she thought, feeling her own desire unfurl and leap up. Inevitable. No use either of them thinking they could stay aloof from each other for long. Even though it was noon and the sun was high in the sky, they had to kiss and touch each other, they had to lie down on the shaded sand side by side, legs entwining intimately, hands seeking and finding sensitive pleasure-giving nerves.

   "This is cheating," she whispered teasingly as he shifted her under him.

   "For you, perhaps, but not for me," he replied with a touch of bitterness. "I've just given you a ring. I noticed you don't wear the professor's."

   "Oh, Keith, what am I going to do? I thought if I told him about my affair with you, he would back out, not want to marry me. But he didn't. I told him because I didn't want to cheat on him."

   "You could do the backing out. You could jolt him," he pointed out, sliding a strap of her swimsuit down her arm, baring one up-tilted rose-topped breast.

   "But I'm not sure..." She broke off with a gasp of pleasurable pain as his fingers pinched the soft swell of flesh and skin. Involuntarily, her body arched against him, her lips parted, her body arched against him, her lips parted, her head swam with all sorts of exquisite sensations.

   "Not sure of what? he asked, raising his head from her breast where his lips had been plundering.

   "Not sure of you," she groaned, still struggling to resist the waves of sensuousness that were beginning to flow through her, feeling that there was something contemptuous in his behavior, a dark current of violence flowing beneath the subtle caresses with which he was arousing her. "No, Keith. Please don't make me cheat," she whispered desperately.

   For answer, his lips covered hers bruisingly. His kiss was like nine she had known before, not even from him. It brutalized her mouth and her cry of protest was lost in the heat of his mouth. And then suddenly everything changed as passion exploded between them and violence was transformed into a desperate aching need. No longer protesting, Selena responded instinctively to that need because she felt it too. Sensuousness swamped her mind. She lost all control and together they were swept along to a wild climax that left them both silent and panting, their bodies lax, all tension gone.

    And in that sun-shot, noon-hot silence, Keith withdrew from her and walked away.