He hadn’t taken a partner. Not because he couldn’t find one, but because if he couldn’t take Amber Hollingsworth, he wouldn’t take anyone. Such had been his obsession with her.
Actually, there had been several girls in class who would have happily been his partner—not to mention his latest girlfriend. By then, at nearly nineteen, Ben’s tall, lean frame had filled out nicely, and some of his female classmates had suddenly seemed to find his looks quite sexy.
Ben had cut his sexual teeth on their unexpected and quite brazen willingness during his last two terms in high school. But none had held his interest beyond a couple of encounters. For one thing he hadn’t had enough money to date a steady girlfriend. For another he’d quickly grown to despise their easiness.
Despite her overt sensuality and nymph-like beauty, Amber Hollingsworth had still been a virgin. Everyone in school had known that. If she hadn’t been, her latest boyfriend would have shouted his success to the rooftops and beyond.
Chris Johnson had thought he was God’s gift to girls, with his sun-streaked blond hair and bronzed torso. Sunrise High’s best surfer had reputedly made out with every half-decent-lookirtg bird in school, and had set his sights on the prize of prizes—the beautiful blonde daughter of the richest man in town.
So far, without much success, it had seemed.
Ben had set out to look as good as he could that night. It had been a matter of pride, not hope.
He’d saved every cent for weeks from what he’d earned selling free-range eggs door to door after school, and had hired a proper formal outfit. A smart black tux, a dazzling white shirt and a crisp black bow-tie. He’d even bought new black shoes. He’d also had his unruly black waves professionally trimmed. Gran had pronounced him very handsome indeed as she drove him to the school hall in her rusty old pick-up truck.
Amber had looked more beautiful that night than he’d ever seen her. Her dress had been virginal white, yet very sexy. Just down to her knees, with a floaty skirt and a tight top with tiny straps over her shoulders.
Ben hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. He hadn’t bothered to hide his feelings this time, letting his crazed but usually controlled desire off the leash for once, gobbling her up with a hungry gaze which no girl could have mistaken.
She hadn’t mistaken it. And she’d looked back. Long, agitated glances which had carried an intriguingly fearful quality, as though she hadn’t wanted to look back at him, but couldn’t help herself.
Her reluctant but compelling interest had stirred a wildly reckless confidence in Ben. When her boyfriend had abandoned Amber to go to the men’s room around midnight, Ben had sauntered across the dance floor towards her.
‘Come for a walk with me,’ he said, his words not a polite request but a blunt order. He often adopted an arrogant attitude with girls these days, and, perversely, it seemed to work. But he’d never dreamt he would talk to Amber Hollingsworth in such an offhanded fashion. Usually just her presence could deflate his confidence, though not a certain part of his anatomy. At this very moment, every single part of him was raging with a wild desire.
Her lovely blue eyes widened. She might have tossed her hair, but it was up, with long tantalising tendrils curling around her beautiful face.
‘Who do you think you’re talking to, Ben Sinclair?’ she retorted, though shakily. ‘I’m not one of those little sluts you’ve been running around with who let you do what you like down behind the gym.’
‘Just shut up and do as you’re told,’ he muttered, and, taking her hand, curled his fingers forcefully through hers. An electric charge raced down his arm—and up hers, judging by the look on her face.
‘Come on,’ he insisted, and began pulling her through the throng of gyrating dancers. Several of their graduating classmates stared after them.
Ben suspected he might have Chris Johnson to contend with the following day, but he didn’t care. At that moment Amber was meekly following his lead, and looking just a little bewildered by her own submissive behaviour. Ben was quite blown away by the dizzying feeling of power charging along his already dangerously heated bloodstream.
He didn’t take her behind the gym. He took her down behind the staff block, which was further away. It was also darker. He drew her into a recessed doorway and pressed her up against the smooth wooden door. He could hardly see her face in the darkness, but he could smell her heady perfume and feel her trembling body.
He didn’t say a word. He just started kissing her. And touching her. All over.
She didn’t stop him. In fact she was soon actively aiding and abetting him. Kissing him back, touching him back. She couldn’t seem to get enough of him.
His own fierce arousal quickly transformed to a passionate resolve. He would be her first. He would show her how much she meant to him, how much he’d always wanted her.
And ten minutes later he was doing just that, doing it while they stood there in that darkened doorway, doing it with a startling and shocking ease. She clung to his shoulders and whispered his name as he surged deeply—and unimpeded—into her.
There was no protest or cry of pain from his supposedly virginal victim, only a low moan of the most ecstatic pleasure. She began moving on him with an amazingly practised skill, squeezing and releasing his flesh as no girl had ever done to him before.
Stunned and stupidly distressed, he’d immediately withdrawn, standing there in a speechless state as he tried to come to terms with his shock. Her only reaction was a dazed groan of disappointment at having her satisfaction snatched away from her at the last moment.
His own far more crippling disappointment suddenly found voice in his tongue, and he tore strips off her in words which he could not remember afterwards. He only knew he called her all sorts of names. He didn’t mean most of them, of course. It was his hurt talking. He’d been a fool to put her on such a pedestal.
But she had the last word anyway. She put the seal on what he meant to her and how she really felt about him...by not saying anything. By turning up her nose and simply going back to the ball and dancing with Chris as if nothing had happened. She looked right through him when he came back inside. When he kept staring at her, she laughed, then curled her arms much more tightly around Chris’ neck.
He’d been shocked. And shattered. He’d never known a girl could be like that. Ruthless. Unfeeling. Cruel. He had heard that laugh in his head for years, repeatedly imagining how that evening had ended for her, wrapped naked in Chris’s arms, giving him all she’d given Ben. But much, much more.
Ben shuddered at his masochistic thoughts, forcibly snapping his mind back to the present. He hadn’t thought about Amber Hollingsworth in such depth for a long time. God knew why she still haunted him. She wasn’t worth thinking about. Females like her were only good for one thing.
Ben strode back into his living room, and there, waiting for him, was his hometown paper, the one which kept him in touch—not only with Sunrise, but with Miss High-and-Mighty herself. It had told him about her marriage to an American playboy all those years ago. It had informed him of her divorce and return home three years back.
Ben had hoped her homecoming after her divorce was only a temporary thing, but when her father had had a stroke early last year Ben had been shocked to read in the paper that Amber had taken the helm of Hollingsworths—a most unlikely event, considering she had never been academically minded. At school she’d been more interested in her hair and her nails than in computers or business studies.
But clearly she’d found her feet being a minor tycoon, and she meant to stay. A week before Christmas he’d read in the Gazette about her grand plans for a shopping and cinema complex for the area.
Her ongoing presence in town was one of the reasons Ben had avoided going home last Christmas. His gran always dragged him along to church, and the thought of running into Amber there, as he seemed to