JULIA lay in bed next to Silas, dreamily watching the early-morning sunshine stroking golden warmth onto his bare skin. Silas had the most perfect male body she had ever seen, and just looking at it—at him—filled her with such a deep well of wonder and happiness. She had never imagined that she would know this level of joy and fulfilment, or feel that her future stretched out in front of her in a rose-coloured pathway sparkling with gold dust. She was just so happy—and all because of Silas.
‘I thought you said you wanted to be up early today, with it being Dorland’s big day.’
‘Mmm, I did,’ she agreed reluctantly.
She was going to be tied up for most of the day, and they had agreed that Silas would leave her to do what she had to do whilst he got on with some work of his own. But not yet. Definitely not yet. She snuggled closer to Silas, drawing sexy shapes on his bare shoulder with the tip of her tongue and then, nibbling his earlobe and whispering in his ear.
‘You’ve got to guess what I’m drawing, and if you’re wrong you have to pay a forfeit.’
‘Which is?’
‘Either massage my feet or shag me.’
‘And if I get it right and win?’
‘You get to massage my feet and shag me,’ Julia told him generously, before adding dreamily, ‘I’m keeping a count of how many orgasms I’ve had with you.’
‘What for? Comparison or posterity?’
Julia giggled. ‘Well, it isn’t for comparison—no one could compare with you, Silas. Do you think I should count all those little mini multiple “o”s I had last night as one or individually?’
As Silas moved, the bedclothes slipped down past his waist, revealing the thick hard jut of his morning erection for her adoring and admiring approval.
‘How close are you to double figures?’ he asked lazily.
‘Mmm…with the multiples I’m over it, and without I’m just over halfway to triple. Oh…that is so nice…’ She exhaled heavily as his tongue caressed the nipple of the bare breast closest to his mouth whilst his fingers worked sensually on the other.
Drawing her with him, Silas lay flat against the bed, so that she was arched over him on her hands and knees.
Watching her excitement as she responded to the sure guidance of his hands, Silas was sharply aware of how unique she was. He had had sex, and he had had good sex, but he had never had sex with a woman who responded to him with the openness and enjoyment, the complete naturalness and the sheer happiness manifested by Julia. She showed him in so many different ways that having sex with him gave her pleasure and delight and made her feel good, and as a consequence of that she made him feel good. In fact she made him feel one hell of a lot more than merely good.
Her breathless ‘Oh, Silas, look!’ had him pushing aside his thoughts to obediently look down his own body to where she was straddling him, and slowly and joyously taking him into her inch by inch.
‘Mmm, doesn’t that look good? It feels good too…You are just so big!’ she cooed delightedly.
Foolish, flattering words. But the insane thing was that Julia quite plainly actually meant them.
She eased down on him a little more, using her muscles to gently squeeze and then stroke his erection in a movement that made him close his eyes and fight for self-control.
But Julia obviously had other ideas, and he could hear her laughing softly as she took him deeper and held him harder, and his control exploded in the red heat of his need to drive into her over and over again, his hands gripping her hips as she moaned and writhed above him.
Outwardly she might look businesslike and in control but inside she was just a delicious boneless mass of sexually satisfied woman. Very sexually satisfied woman, Julia congratulated herself, as she listened to a very Notting Hill type who obviously fancied himself describing to her the birthday party he had attended in Venice earlier in the year.
‘And we were all taken to the party on these fantastic gondolas along the canals. Everyone was in costume. It was terribly Thirties and decadent. I’ve heard that an American TV network is filming Dorland’s party for one of those fly-on-the-wall docudrama things. Is it true?’
‘I really don’t know, Charles. You’ll have to ask Dorland,’ Julia answered truthfully.
‘And which famous people are going to be here?’
‘I haven’t seen the guest list,’ Julia replied. Which wasn’t true.
‘Julia—darling!’
Charles was shouldered aside by a trio of frighteningly stiff-faced women whom Julia vaguely recognised from school—not fellow pupils but their mothers. One of them, or so it was whispered behind closed doors, had not—as she liked to claim—been in her youth a high-priced model, but rather a high-priced whore.
‘So clever of you to bag Silas.’ Cold sharp gazes swept her from head to toe.
These women were part of the new social order—fifty-something divorcees, prepared to fight dirty in order to look more like thirty. While their ex-husbands used their money to replace them with younger models, these women used their divorce settlements to try and turn back time. And the better-informed ones sometimes actually managed it, Julia knew, thinking of at least half a dozen high-profile society hostesses who genuinely looked as though they had been able to turn the figure five into a three.
Unfortunately for them, though, these three were not among that half-dozen.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Julia agreed, flashing them a very happy smile.
‘All that money, and a title—and best of all, he’s wonderful in bed.’
Scarlet and green was never a good colour combination on aging faces, Julia decided smugly, and she left them with their red faces and jealous eyes to go and see how things were progressing with the decorating of the large marquee which had been put up for the occasion.
All the invitations had specified that Dorland’s guests were to wear either their own most ‘papped’ (papparazzied) outfit, or a copy of one worn by someone else. And Julia had privately predicted that at least half the female guests under thirty-five (and that meant all the female guests, since none of them was likely to admit to being older) would be wearing a copy of the designer Julien Macdonald’s itsy-bitsy sparkly dress, as worn by a certain top international star when she upstaged the bride at a celebrity wedding. With this in mind, Julia had suggested to Dorland that they keep the interior of the marquee quietly elegant and in colours that would act as a foil to the celebrated dress.
Dorland had resisted her advice at first, having fallen in love with the idea of mimicking a certain branded and banded couple’s wedding, with gold throne-like chairs studded with fake jewels instead of the simple, plain cream-covered dining chairs Julia had suggested, decorated with glittery grey and black and white ribbon tied into bows.
When Julia reached the tented anteroom of the main marquee, the construction people were just finishing setting up the champagne fountain Dorland had fallen in love with, and Dorland himself was busy giggling with a bevy of ultra-thin leggy blondes, who all seemed to be clutching small hairy dogs.
The combination of shrill yaps—from both pets and owners—was positively eardrum assaulting, Julia decided as she hurried out again—only to come to an abrupt halt as she saw Nick standing blocking her path.
‘I hear you really ballsed up in Positano,’ he told her unkindly.
Julia didn’t like being bullied, and she lifted her chin and told him sharply, ‘Someone certainly did.’
She thought for a minute that Nick was going to challenge her to explain what she meant, but instead he looked at her left hand and said mockingly, ‘He’s still not given you a ring, then?’
‘Actually, he has,’ Julia semi-fibbed. After all, Silas had told her that he wanted her to wear the Monckford Diamond.
‘I must say you’ve surprised me, Jules,’ Nick drawled nastily. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’ve got what it takes to hook a man like Silas. Has he told you about Aimee DeTroite?’
‘Whatever Aimee may have been to Silas, that is now in the past,’ she told him lightly.
‘You mean Silas has told you she’s in the past. So far as she’s concerned she is still very much in his present and his future—but of course he won’t have told you that.’
What had she ever seen in Nick? He was a loathsome, vile, repellent toad, and she hated him for what he was doing to Lucy.
‘No, he hasn’t,’ she agreed coolly. ‘But he has told me about you.’
‘What does that mean?’ Nick demanded.
‘You know what it means. It means that Silas has checked up on you and the business. How could you do this to Lucy, Nick?’
‘What have you said to her?’
‘Nothing—yet. But I—’
‘Jules—there you are. Have you got a moment?’
‘Of course, Dorland.’ Julia smiled, walking away from Nick to go and see what Dorland wanted.
Had Nick just been trying to upset her when he had told her about Aimee? Or did the other woman genuinely have grounds for claiming that she was involved in an on-going relationship with Silas? An affair with Silas now, in fact, since Silas was married to her.
Julia could feel her heart thumping painfully. She felt sick and dizzy from the mixture of anxiety and confusion and adrenalin hurtling through her veins. She was determined to hang on to her belief that whatever had happened before her in Silas’s private life was his alone to know about, if that was what he wished. Aimee was certainly not the type Julia would have thought would appeal to Silas. But Silas had dated her. And Silas had appeared in one of those stolen videos. She had not seen the video, but she had read the gossip when the story had first broken earlier in the year.
Nick was a troublemaker, she warned herself, and Silas was entitled to have a past. A past, yes. But right now she needed to know that not only was she his present and his future, but also that she was going to be his only present and future! And she needed to know it because she was wildly, passionately and totally in love with him.
Because he was the best shag she had ever had?
How shallow was that? Loving someone was about more than a ten-second orgasm, surely? About more than even double figures of them. Loving someone involved things like respect, and wanting to share the rest of your life with them, in sickness and in health. It meant that being with them added an extra dimension to your life. It meant that they were the light that filled your life, the extra special someone without whom your life felt empty and for whom your heart ached.
And that was exactly how she felt about Silas.
When she eventually got back to their villa, Silas was waiting for her.
‘Sorry I’ve been so long. Dorland was waffling on for ever about Jon Belton. I think he might have a crush on him. Oh, and Silas, guess what? Nick’s here.’
‘Blayne? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Dorland interrupted us before I could ask him. I can’t understand now why I didn’t realise how loathsome he is when I first met him. I told him we know what’s going on, and how much I hate him for what he’s doing to Lucy.’
‘I thought we’d agreed that nothing was going to be said about that until it could be proved?’
‘Well, yes. I know you did say that. But he made me so very angry, and it just sort of slipped out.’
‘What do you mean, he made you angry?’
‘Oh, he said that he couldn’t understand why you wanted me, and he asked me if I’d asked you about your relationship with Aimee DeTroite.’ Julia looked at him, but Silas had turned away from her.
His body language positively bristled with ‘keep off the past’ signs that sent a shiver of female anxiety icing down her spine. As a woman she could think of only one reason why he was making it plain he didn’t want to talk about Aimee, and that was because he still had feelings for her. No woman ever minded about talking about a burned-out love affair, especially not when doing so might help to underline her besotted adoration for her current love interest, Julia reasoned, so it must be the same for men.
Therefore, by one of those lightening and complicated equations so familiar to the female mind, she was very quickly able to work out that Aimee plus silence equalled unrequited love—which, when added to physical frustration plus male pride, added up to marriage to her. And that equation, when totalled with her own sum of total love for Silas, plus insecurity, plus jealousy, plus uncertainty, equated to the chemical effect of a lighted match being dropped straight into a keg of gunpowder.
The result was immediate and explosive.
‘You just married me because you can’t have her, didn’t you? She rejected you, and so to make her jealous you pretended to be engaged to me! Well, I don’t care how many sexy videos you made with her, she’s—Silas!’ Julia protested as he started to stride away from her.
‘What the hell is this?’ Silas demanded angrily as he turned to look at her. ‘You’re my wife, not a federal judge, and besides…’
‘Besides what? You’ve only had sex with her?’
Silas couldn’t believe his ears. Did Julia really think that he…? Aimee DeTroite was a head case—totally off the wall and dangerous with it.
‘Look, Julia, just ease off on the histrionics, will you? I married you—’
‘And you shagged Aimee—the whole world knows that, and most of it has seen the video,’ Julia told him nastily.
The vicious slamming of the door as Silas brought their argument to an end shuddered through the whole villa.
Dorland’s party would be starting in half an hour, and it was time for her to go over to the marquee—even though she hadn’t made things up with Silas, Julia realised miserably.
All the time she had been getting ready she had been hoping he would walk into the bedroom. But he hadn’t, and her own pride would not let her go in search of him. After all, she had done nothing wrong.
She looked at her watch. She couldn’t delay any longer. Even so she still dawdled in the villa’s entrance hall, and dropped her bag on the tiled floor to alert Silas to her presence just in case he did want to make amends, but her husband maintained an obstinate absence and silence.
She must not start howling now, Julia warned herself as she opened the villa door, and she blinked fiercely, firmly straightening her shoulders.
Silas removed his frowning concentration from the e-mail he had just received on his BlackBerry for long enough to watch as Julia hurried away from the villa. She was wearing a long black dress that clung sensually to her body. Round her hips she had wrapped what looked to Silas very much like the Herme`s scarf his mother had given her for her birthday, and over that she had fastened a heavy belt set with turquoise stones. The whole effect was very Julia, Silas decided.
His frown disappeared and his mouth started to turn up at the corners. She would look stunning in the Maharajah’s jewels, and she would probably devise some innovative way of wearing them that would shock the purists rigid. The sound of his own laughter startled him, and then made him frown slightly as he put down his BlackBerry.
There was no getting away from the fact that Julia had the most extraordinary effect on him. By rights he ought still to be angry with her, but instead he was laughing—and he was tempted to drop the BlackBerry and race after her. She was the most ridiculous, infuriating woman there could possibly be, aggravatingly sunny-natured and welded to those rose-tinted glasses through which she seemed to view humanity. She was illogical and stubborn and sometimes just plain crazy. And she made him feel…
Feel? He did not ‘feel’ things. He analysed and dissected them; he applied practical reasoning to them—just as he had applied practical reasoning to their marriage. But how could you apply practical reasoning to a woman who wanted to know if a multiple orgasm counted as one or not; a woman who referred to your penis as a ‘gorgeous, sexy hunny-bunny of a shag shaft,’ cooing the words in between stroking and kissing it; a woman who asked you in all seriousness if you thought that, if she whispered a few words to them, ‘all the sperm in your baby gravy’ would paddle like mad to make her pregnant.
Practical reasoning and Julia were poles apart—at opposite ends of any scale—which was why she needed him to keep an eye on her. And that, of course, was the only reason why he was going to get showered and changed and go and join Dorland’s ridiculous ego fest of a party.
It was nearly midnight, the party had been going on for hours, and she still hadn’t seen any sign of Silas—even though she had spent what felt like the whole night looking for him.
‘Julia.’ She stiffened as she saw Nick approaching with a group of louche-looking young men—the sons of some of Dorland’s older guests, Julia recognized, most of whom looked rather the worse for drink.
‘I’ve brought a few of your admirers over to say hello to you.’
The boys—for they were little more, Julia decided—blushed and brayed and generally behaved as male teenagers do under the influence of drink and raging hormones.
‘Are you enjoying the party?’ Julia asked them in a kind voice, at the same time looking round discreetly to see if she could spot Silas anywhere.
‘Any one for more champagne?’ Nick demanded, revealing the unopened bottle he was carrying.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ Julia refused, showing him her already half-full glass.
‘Rubbish—of course you want some,’ Nick insisted, taking it from her and turning away to put it on a table while he opened the bottle, then filling it and topping up everyone else’s glasses. ‘Here you go.’
Julia took a polite mouthful of the drink and tried to keep up her smile as the men gathered around her, making drunken attempts at wit and charm.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got great tits?’ one of the boys asked her.
Pretending she hadn’t heard him, she moved slightly away from him. She finished the champagne and put her glass down on a nearby table, wanting to get away.
‘Is that Silas over there?’ Nick asked Julia, and watched in satisfaction as she turned her head to look where he was indicating, towards the marquee.
In the darkness on the other side of the large people-packed stretch of gardens that separated him from Julia, Silas frowned as he saw her with Nick and a group of young men. As he watched, she put down her glass and seemed to be trying to edge away from the group.
She had her back to him, and something about her stance made Silas think of a young fox surrounded by out-of-control baying hounds. Blayne was obviously saying something to her, because she suddenly turned her head to look in the opposite direction from the table. Behind her back, one of the group of young men refilled her glass while another dropped something into her drink.
Anxiously, and oblivious to what was happening, Julia continued to look in the direction Nick had indicated, even though she could see no sign of Silas.
‘Julia!’ Even though he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him, Silas still called out her name in sharp warning as he started to thrust his way through the crowd towards her.
‘Come on, Jules—drink up,’ Julia heard Nick urging her affably, as he proffered a second glass of champagne. Reluctantly she turned to face him, taking a polite sip. ‘I really have to go now,’ she told him. ‘Dorland will be wondering where I am.’
‘Oh, but we aren’t going to let you go yet—are we, boys? Come on, drink up. That’s right.’
There was a look in Nick’s eyes that was quite frightening, Julia saw uncomfortably. A mixture of excitement and cruelty that made her desperately want to get away from him. And the boys with him, although no doubt charming as individuals, in their present overheated and drunken state reminded her far too much of hungry, mob-minded pack animals.
Nick was already holding on to her arm now, and the boys were pressing much closer to her than she liked.
Anxious to get away from them without any unpleasantness, Julia took a gulp of her champagne.
‘Come on—you’ve got to drink it all. Hasn’t she, lads?’ She could hear Nick speaking, but oddly the words seemed to be reaching her from a distance. Even more oddly, her mouth seemed to be going numb, whilst her body felt heavy and all she could see were blurred images.
She was being sucked down into a vortex of darkness. Darkness and harsh mocking laughter, whilst hands reached for her and tugged at her clothes.
‘What have you given her?’
Silas was standing cradling Julia’s inert body in one arm, Nick’s blood crimsoning the knuckles of his free hand, whilst Nick himself lay where he had fallen, in a tangle of wrought-iron chairs and pot plants, nursing his bruised jaw. The least drunk of the young men were rapidly sobering up, and looking white-faced with fear.
‘Liquid X—you know, GHB,’ one of them volunteered, shamefaced. ‘Couple of doses, I reckon, ’cos Nick put some in too.’
Nick glowered at Silas silently.
‘Blayne told us she was up for it,’ another of them insisted. ‘Said he’d see us all right if we helped him.’
Whilst Silas’s attention was on them Nick managed to struggle to his feet. Damn that bloody bitch Julia. He had been determined to have his revenge on her, and to make sure that no one would ever take any accusations she might make seriously. If Silas hadn’t intervened right now the Honourable Julia would have been on her way to becoming the Dishonoured Julia, in the cheap apartment Nick was renting. He had already set up everything he would need to film Julia enjoying the intimate attentions of the drunken youths he had planned to incite to take full advantage of her and the situation she was in.
By tomorrow morning he would have had a video of the whole thing that would have earned him a small fortune and humiliated and humbled Julia. No way would his sanctimonious wife have believed a word her precious friend had to say once his video became public property.
Silas could see Nick scuttling away, but he wasn’t prepared to leave Julia to go after him.
He had reached her just as she collapsed, and had heard her terrified whimper of protest as she felt his hands on her body, her own trying desperately to push him away.
The images inside his head of what her fate would have been if he hadn’t witnessed what was happening and got to her in time, filled him with fury and anguish. His arms tightened protectively around her as she lolled helplessly against him.
‘You—go and find a doctor and bring him here,’ he instructed the most sober of the youths grimly. ‘There should be one at the first aid station. And as for the rest of you…I won’t forget what nearly happened here tonight.’