JUST thinking about Nick? Hardly. No, what she really meant was that she wanted Blayne, despite having insisted previously that she didn’t. And despite, too, having responded physically to him.
Silas wasn’t used to hearing a woman express desire for another man when she was with him. And he certainly wasn’t used to the feelings he was now experiencing. Anger, pain—jealousy? What on earth was happening to him?
Oblivious to the interpretation Silas had put on her words, Julia took a deep breath and then asked uncomfortably, ‘Silas, you don’t think that Nick could be—?’
‘I don’t think he could be what? So unhappy in his marriage that he should leave Lucy for you?’ Silas demanded savagely.
‘Leave Lucy for me? I’ve already told you that I don’t want him!’
‘But you can’t stop thinking about him?’
‘What? No! I’m not thinking about him like that,’ Julia protested. ‘It’s Lucy I’m concerned about.’
When Silas continued to look unconvinced, she told him, ‘Nick deals with the financial side of the business, and I can’t help wondering…’
It was hard to come out and say what she was actually thinking, but she could see from Silas’s expression that she was going to have to—unless she wanted him to continue to think she wanted Nick. Although quite why it suddenly seemed so very important to convince him that she didn’t, and that there was no one else in her life, she wasn’t prepared to analyse too much.
Instead she took a deep breath and said uncomfortably, ‘I’m probably being stupid about this, but I can’t help worrying that Nick might be…’ This was so difficult! ‘Silas, you don’t think he could be doing anything wrong, do you?’ she appealed anxiously.
‘Wrong? What kind of wrong?’
When she began to chew anxiously on her bottom lip and looked uneasy, Silas suddenly realised what she was trying to say.
‘You think that Blayne might be defrauding the business?’
Relief replaced Julia’s earlier discomfort. ‘Yes! Well, no. I don’t know. I mean, why should he, when he’s married to Lucy? But I know that I never saw those e-mails from the hotel. I know that I passed the cheque on to Nick, along with the invoices it was supposed to cover.’
‘You said yourself that the business was struggling to make money—maybe the situation is worse than you know and Blayne simply couldn’t pay out the deposits because there wasn’t enough money?’
‘In that case why didn’t he say something to me? Warn me? He was very angry that he wasn’t going to be coming to Positano with me. I thought it was because I’d told him I wasn’t going to have sex with him, but if he knew that there was going to be a problem here…Oh, Silas, I just don’t know what to think or do. Lucy is one of my two closest friends. Prêt a Party is her business. The last thing I want is to do something that might hurt her.’
It was only natural that he should be relieved to discover that Julia had not lied to him, Silas assured himself. But a taunting inner voice told him mockingly, Relieved, yes. But surely not almost euphoric?
‘Would you like me to make some discreet enquiries?’
‘I don’t know,’ Julia admitted. ‘Maybe if you left it until I’ve been able to speak to Lucy and…and check everything.’
‘You’re worried that Lucy might be implicated as well?’ Silas guessed.
‘No! Lucy would never do anything dishonest.’
‘But you think that Blayne could have involved her in something he has done that is dishonest?’
‘I don’t know, Silas…and, like I just said, I don’t want to do anything that could hurt her. I feel so sorry for her, and I feel a bit guilty as well. If it hadn’t been for me she would never have met Nick in the first place.’
‘You can’t say that. She might still have met him without you.’
She looked so distressed that Silas immediately found he wanted to comfort her. And not just verbally, he realised, and he discovered that somehow or other he had moved closer to her.
‘I am grateful to you for what you did at the hotel, Silas,’ Julia told him huskily. Silas was being so very kind and understanding.
‘I just wish…’ She stopped speaking as Silas reached out and drew her purposefully into his arms.
‘Why don’t we forget about Prêt a Party and focus on this instead?’
So much had happened that she had almost forgotten the thrill of anticipation and excitement she had felt earlier. Almost, but not entirely. And now immediately it was back, her pleasure even hotter and sweeter this time as Silas kissed her with deliberate thoroughness.
‘Mmm.’ Julia slipped her arms round his neck to hold him closer as she savoured the deepening passion of his kiss, and then shivered in voluptuous pleasure as his hands sculpted the curves of her body before taking possession of her breasts.
Her own arousal was hot and fiery and immediate. Behind her closed eyelids she could see erotic images of them together—Silas’s hands and mouth on her naked body, possessing it and her. She could see herself writhing in eager urgency whilst his lips played erotically with the tight, hot jut of her nipples, his hand slipping between her legs to open her to his sensual exploration.
But who needed to imagine when what he was already doing to her was so effective? She loved the way his fingertips stroked her breast, so slowly and tantalisingly, and then drew erotically on her waiting nipple, savouring its hardness through the layers of fabric.
He lifted his mouth from hers and started to kiss her jaw, causing her to arch back her head so that he could plunder the soft, sweet flesh of her throat, and then move lower to that special secret place where her neck ran into her shoulder and where just the warmth of his breath was enough to make her shudder in wanton need.
Being held, and touched and kissed like this, with nothing to do other than let Silas build her arousal, was the most deliciously sensual and self-indulgent pleasure. She exhaled slowly on a luxuriant sigh of delight and stroked her fingertips through the thick hair at the back of his neck. His flesh felt warm and firm, and oh, so wonderfully male. A feeling of harmony and happiness, of rightfulness, stroked slowly through her like a delicious extra layer of physical pleasure. She traced the curve of his neck and then the rigid hardness of his collarbone with delicate fingertips, savouring his male difference.
‘Mmm. Lovely strong muscles.’
The approving, almost purring pleasure in her voice caused Silas to tug urgently on her nipple and then bite gently at her earlobe before whispering thickly, ‘Why don’t we get rid of some of these clothes?’
Beneath his hands her body arched fiercely in eager response.
‘I thought you were never going to ask,’ Julia admitted huskily.
Silas had switched off the electric lights, but the doors to the balcony were open and uncurtained. The sky was so bright with stars and a full moon that more than enough silver light was shining down on them for him to see her clearly. Her eyes shone with liquid desire, her lips slightly swollen and flushed with colour from his kisses. Not even the fact that she was fully dressed could conceal her arousal: the stiff thrust of her nipples was plainly visible. He reached out and traced a slow circle with his fingertip around the one he had been caressing, watching with totally male satisfaction as her whole body tightened and she exhaled fiercely. Inside his head he could already see the naked flesh of her breast, creamy pale against the puckered darkness of her nipple; he could feel the way her body would shudder as he teased the tight peak with the tip of his tongue before taking it fully into his mouth. He could even hear her wild cry of erotic pleasure as she called out to him to satisfy her.
What was Silas waiting for? Julia looked up at him questioningly, and then reached out to touch the hard ridge of his erection, stroking its fabric-covered heat with delicate fingertips, seeking and finding the sensitive place where its head bulged thickly from his foreskin.
Silas discovered that he could scarcely bear to so much as breathe as he stood stiff and still whilst her fingertip mapped and teased him, in case somehow he missed a fraction of the almost unbearable pleasure of her touch.
It wasn’t very often that Silas felt any need to give thanks for the gifts life had given him—he was, after all, a man who dealt in practicalities, not emotions—but suddenly he recognised that unexpectedly he had received a very special life-enhancing bonus. He wanted Julia and she wanted him, and the desire between them was so hot and so fierce, so immediate and so damned right, that it almost made their marriage a necessity in its own right.
Whatever he had envisaged when he had thought about marriage to Julia, it had not been that he would feel like this. But now that he did feel like this…Silas gave a low, tormented moan of raw male pleasure as her fingertips slowly and rhythmically worked his foreskin over the pulsing head of his penis, whilst she used her free hand to unzip his trousers and then unfasten his belt.
She wanted them to get naked? Well, so did he.
Silas could be both ruthless and inventive when he wanted to be, Julia decided happily only seconds later, as her clothes were removed so speedily and determinedly that it seemed to her that one minute she was fully dressed and the next she was standing in the moonlight wearing only her very brief lace thong, with Silas kneeling on the floor in front of her. Or rather she was almost wearing it. Because Silas had slid his hands beneath the thin lace-covered elastic that had been resting on her hips and was circling her belly button with his tongue-tip.
His hands moved to her bottom, kneading the rounded flesh whilst his tongue teased a line of fire just above the triangle of lace fabric covering the firm, mound of her pubic bone.
He had loved one hand from her bottom and was sliding it between her legs, stroking the sensitive flesh on the inside of her thighs, his touch making her sigh with soft pleasure.
Somehow the warmth of his lips teasing the sensual spot just above the soft dark curls that covered her mound, the slow, explorative stroke of his fingers as they moved up her thigh and under the lacy barrier between them, and the eager swelling of the soft fleshy lips concealing her sex seemed to link the two parts of her body together via an almost electric invisible arc of sizzlingly erotic pleasure. It made her want to push deeper into his touch. It made her want to wantonly demand that he give her more, so very much more. It made her want to urge him to make those tiny flutters of sensation she could feel pulsing deep inside her wet heat become much stronger and fiercer. In short, it made her want…
‘Oh, Silas…’ she groaned warningly, her helpless moan of pleasure turning to a sharp gasp as his fingertip stroked through her wetness to caress her clitoris. Almost immediately her body was seized with a violent shudder of delight that left her quivering helplessly whilst Silas picked her up and carried her over to the bed, placing her on it and then stripping off his clothes whilst she lay watching him.
In all the years they had known one another she had never so much as seen him wearing a pair of swimming shorts, she realised as her eager gaze delighted in the sight of his wide shoulders tapering down to a flat stomach. His skin was lightly tanned, his body hair dark and soft-looking, lightly covering his chest but making an erotically denser line down the centre of his body before thickening out around his penis.
‘Mmm…’ Julia purred happily as she reached up to touch him. ‘You’ve got a gorgeous, sexy body, Silas. Just looking at it makes me melt inside with anticipation.’
He had always known that she had a tendency to be outspoken and say whatever came into her head, but he hadn’t known just how much pleasure that outspokenness was going to give him, Silas thought, as a certain part of his ‘gorgeous, sexy body’ showed its appreciation of her compliment by stiffening even more.
‘Mmm.’ Julia reached out and ran one fingertip around the engorged glossy head, her touch making Silas fight to smother a groan of pleasure and a small bead of milky fluid began to form.
Very gently Julia caught it with her fingertip and looked up at Silas, laughing softly. ‘Ooh. Baby gravy.’
‘You want my baby?’ Silas heard himself demanding thickly.
‘Silas…’ Julia began to protest. But Silas was already kissing her so passionately that it was impossible for her to say or do anything other than respond to him.
‘I’d forgotten just how good skin on skin feels,’ Julia murmured sleepily as she snuggled into Silas, her hand spread flat against his chest, registering the post-orgasm slowing of his heartbeat.
‘Has it been a long time since the last time, then?’ Silas asked her casually.
‘Aeons,’ Julia admitted frankly. ‘In fact so long that I can hardly remember it. You know what it’s like, Silas. When you’re in your teens and you’ve got all those hormones jumping about all over the place sex is all you can think about, but then somehow life takes over, doesn’t it? Setting up the business and then running it has taken up so much time there just hasn’t been any left for anything else. Even if I had met someone I wanted to go to bed with, I wouldn’t have had time.’
‘You met Blayne,’ Silas reminded her.
‘Well, yes, but Nick dropped me for Lucy before we’d got as far as having sex.’
‘So your passionate response is more likely to be the result of frustration than any actual desire for me?’ Silas probed.
‘Who said I was frustrated?’ Julia demanded.
‘You did.’
‘No, I didn’t. I said I’d forgotten how good skin on skin felt. And that’s different. After all, I’ve got Roger to make sure I don’t get frustrated.’
‘Roger?’ Silas queried.
‘Yes Roger. My Rabbit. My vibrator,’ Julia explained, when he looked at her uncomprehendingly, a smile dimpling the corners of her mouth. ‘Jessica Rabbit—a single girl’s best friend. Only I call mine Roger because he…’
Silas started to laugh. ‘Okay, yes—I get it, Roger as in “to roger”—the good old-fashioned English word.’
‘A vibrator’s okay, but no way can it compare with being with you. It was really good for me, Silas,’ Julia told him softly. ‘In fact…’ She hesitated, her fingers curling into the soft hair on his chest, her lashes sweeping down to conceal her expression, but Silas could still see the heat warming her face.
‘In fact?’ he encouraged, noting in fascinated male bewilderment that now she was blushing.
The dark lashes lifted and she was looking at him with those huge amazing eyes of hers.
‘In fact, it was the best sex I have ever had,’ she admitted huskily.
A sensation that was both physical and emotional, and so strong that momentarily it almost stopped his heartbeat, gripped Silas by the throat. It had to be caused by the realisation that he was being given the perfect opportunity to achieve his goal, he told himself practically, before saying, ‘Really? Good enough to make it worthwhile turning this fake engagement of ours into a real marriage?’
‘What? You’re joking!’
Silas shook his head. ‘No. I’m completely serious,’ he told her truthfully.
‘But…but why on earth would you want to marry me?’ Julia demanded, her forehead pleating into a small frown.
‘Oh, the usual reasons,’ Silas told her lightly. ‘You turn me on. You give good head. And I love the way you yell, “Siii—lasss!” when you come.’
Julia giggled and punched him playfully on his arm.
‘Those are not good reasons.’
‘I can’t think of any better,’ Silas told her. ‘Unless it’s the pleasure I get from filling you with baby gravy.’
Julia laughed, and then stopped, her face anxious.
‘Silas, you don’t think…?’
‘I don’t think what?’
Julia started to chew her bottom lip.
‘We didn’t use a condom, and I’m not using any contraception. What are we going to do?’
‘You want kids, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ And that speaking of them as ‘we’ had turned her heart to melting chocolate, Julia realised.
‘So, what are we waiting for?’
‘Silas!’ Julia protested as he turned to reach for her.
‘Okay, maybe it would not be such a good idea for you to walk down the aisle wearing a tent. We’d better buy some condoms—and bring the wedding forward.’
Quite how it was possible over the course of two short days for her to go from thinking of Silas as someone she preferred to see as little of as possible to knowing that she was passionately in love with him and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, preferably making babies, Julia was far too blissed-out and far too sexed-out to worry about.
All she needed to make her whole world perfect was Silas. Silas and a bed. Silas and a shower large enough for two people. Silas and a magical walk along the seashore, with shadows deep enough for them to hide in body to body whilst their shared passion drove them to forget everything but one another. Silas, whose taste she still had on her tongue and whose scent she could still smell on her skin and in her hair. Silas, who always gave that funny little grunt before he gave in to his own orgasm. Silas who filled her and thrilled her, who satisfied her and aroused her, as no other man ever had done or would do.
She was obsessed with him, Julia admitted cheerfully to herself, her mouth curving into a wide, happy smile. Obsessed with him and totally, totally besotted by him. She felt like a particularly smug Bridget Jones-type singleton. The kind who would write deliriously in her diary, 2 days and 20-plus shags. Silas had to be the world’s best lover, even if he protested generously that her partisan enthusiasm was encouraging him to previously unreached heights.
Only this morning he had cupped her face and kissed her nose as the sweat of passion dried on their damp bodies, and told her softly, ‘Don’t ever take off those rose-coloured glasses you view me through, will you.’
Rose-coloured glasses? As if! The wonderful thing about falling in love with Silas was that she already knew everything there was to know about him, so there couldn’t be any unpleasant shocks waiting to wreck their relationship.
‘Julia, my dear, have I told you how wonderful all of this is?’ Mrs. Silverwood enthused emotionally as she left her guests to come and stand with Julia. ‘And all thanks to your wonderful fiancé. I do not know what we would have done if he hadn’t managed to persuade the hotel manager to relent.’
On the other side of the restaurant Silas, whom the Silverwoods had insisted on including in their dinner party, finished his champagne and enjoyed himself watching Julia. He had laughed more in these last two days than he had laughed in the whole of the rest of his life. Laughed more and loved more too.
He sincerely hoped that their children would inherit their mother’s blithe spirits and sense of humour. Their children. Desire hardened his body, causing him to move discreetly back into the shadows. Sex with Julia was like no sex he had ever had before. He simply couldn’t get enough of her, and when his body did cry enough he was filled with a sense of such intense satisfaction that he had no past experience in his life he could compare it to.
This sexual hunger for one another that had overtaken them both had brought a whole new urgency to his determination to marry Julia. The end of the year was way too long to wait. He wanted to tie her to him now, as tightly and permanently as he could. Which was why he had spent hours on the telephone this afternoon, whilst she had been checking over the final arrangements for the dinner. The result was worth the time he had spent, though, even if he had had to twist the arms of both the American and British Ambassadors just slightly in order to get what he wanted. Now all he had to do was persuade Julia.
It was four o’clock in the morning, and the streets of Positano were empty as Silas and Julia walked arm in arm back to their own hotel.
‘The Silverwoods seemed pleased with the way the event went,’ Silas commented.
‘Yes, thanks to you. I nearly died when the hotel chef threw that tantrum yesterday and threatened to walk out. That was really quick thinking on your part, to let him think that the chef from the Arcadia would be happy to take over.’
Silas laughed. ‘Quick thinking, maybe, but not entirely true. Still, it did the trick. Am I right in thinking that now we’ve got ten days before we need to be in Marbella for Dorland’s party?’
‘The party isn’t for another ten days,’ Julia agreed. ‘But we’ll have to be there well before that in order to make sure everything is properly organised.’
‘How well before?’ Silas asked. ‘Will three days be enough?’
‘At a pinch,’ Julia agreed. ‘Why?’
They had almost reached the hotel and Silas stopped walking, drawing her into the shadows with him as he leaned back against a convenient wall, his hands on her hips, guiding her between his parted legs.
Just the scent of him was enough to turn her on. Julia pressed closer to him and lifted her face for his kiss.
‘Let’s not wait to get married.’
His voice was thick and raw, sending a shudder of pleasure jolting through her whilst her heart thudded out a stunned tattoo.
‘What—what do you mean?’ she demanded uncertainly.
‘I mean, let’s not wait to get married. Let’s do it now. Here in Italy.’
His words fell honey-sweet against their ears; her heart lifted in excited pleasure. So far neither of them had spoken the ‘L’ word, but, knowing him as she did, that he should feel such an urgency to commit to her told her just how he felt about her. Even so…
‘Silas, we can’t,’ she protested.
‘Of course we can. I’ve already checked it out. We could be married within the week—less, if I put some more pressure on our Ambassador.’
‘Why the rush?’ she teased him. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
Silas laughed. ‘Yes, I trust you. But I’m not sure that I trust the condoms to withstand the rigours we’ve been subjecting them to.’
Julia giggled.
‘Silas, we couldn’t…could we?’ she breathed excitedly.
‘You want to?’
She closed her eyes and then opened them again.
‘Do I want to be your wife and have guaranteed wonderful sex for the rest of my life? Of course I do,’ she told him extravagantly. ‘But what about the family…what about Gramps?’
‘We could still have a religious blessing in Amberley Church, and even a reaffirmation of our vows and a formal post-wedding breakfast afterwards, if that is what you want.’
‘What I want? All I want is you,’ Julia told him simply, and she raised herself up on her toes to kiss him.