Читать книгу Four Christmas Treats - Пенни Джордан, Jessica Hart - Страница 19

A HEARTBEAT later—or was it a lifetime?—Silas was undressing her in between fiercely possessive and demanding kisses, and she was undressing him. The room was full of the sound of rustling clothes, soft sighs and hungry kisses, as fabric slithered and slipped to the floor, and eager hands moved over even more eager flesh.

Somehow Silas had managed to remove all of his own clothes, as well as most of hers. Now, as he held her against him and slid his hands from her waist down over her hips, past her bottom and then up again under the fluted legs of her pretty new briefs, to cup her warm flesh and press her into his body, her own hand was free to give in to the unfamiliarly wanton demands of her emotions and explore the shape and texture of his rigid erection.

‘Don’t—’ Tilly heard him protest thickly. But it was too late for him to deny the effect her touch was having on him. She had felt it in the savagely intense shudder of pleasure that had gripped and convulsed him.

His reaction gave her the courage to explore more intimately and to give way to the erotic urgings of her own senses. It both excited and aroused her to see and feel him responding so helplessly to her, so possessed by desire and need that he couldn’t control the visibly physical pleasure she was giving him.

She could feel the heavy slam of his heart against her own body, its arousal mirrored by the uneven sound of his breathing in her ear as he held her and caressed her with growing passion. But when he stroked a shockingly erotic caressing fingertip down her back, beyond the base of her spine, it was her turn to moan in fevered arousal and melt into him.

Immediately she curled her hand around him, wanting to reciprocate the pleasure he was giving her, but Silas stopped her, telling her hotly, ‘I can’t let you do that. If I do…’ She felt him shudder, and then shuddered herself when he told her, ‘I want you so damn much that I can’t trust myself not to come too soon if you touch me.’

‘That works both ways,’ Tilly protested breathlessly, squirming with heated pleasure under his exploratory touch, shocked by her own verbal boldness and yet at the same time acknowledging how much it meant to her to be able to be so open and natural with him about her sexual responsiveness.

How tame her imaginings in the shop as she had bought the new underwear seemed now, compared to the reality of what Silas’s touch was actually doing to her. And as for her not touching him. How could she not when her need to do so was growing by the heartbeat? When she ached so badly to stroke her fingertips along the full length of his erection? She wanted to know every single nuance of the texture of its flesh. She wanted to explore the inviting slick suppleness of its pulse-racing male rhythm beneath her caress. She wanted…

She shuddered wildly under the erotic influence of her own thoughts, and then more wildly still when Silas stroked slowly all the way up her spine. His tongue-tip prised her lips apart and she admitted it eagerly, giving herself over completely to the thrusting passion of his kiss. His hand cupped her breast, and the heat inside her exploded in a firework display of shimmering pleasure. She caught his hand and pressed it fiercely against her breast as she moved rhythmically against him, every single part of her gripped by and focused on her longing for him.

Somehow, at some deep level, he had known it would be like this between them, Silas admitted as he lost the battle to control his response to Tilly’s arousal. What she was doing to him was causing what felt like a huge unstoppable wave of aching intensity and need to power through him. He knew that he was helplessly unable to stop himself from succumbing to it and to her. He knew that he didn’t even want to stop himself. And he knew that both of them were going to be overwhelmed by it, swept along together with only each other to cling to as the full power of what was happening to them possessed them. It was too late to stop it now, even if he wanted to. The openly urgent rhythmic movement of Tilly’s body against his own was driving him over the edge of his self control.

‘I want you,’ he cried out in a raw voice. ‘I want you more than I have ever wanted any other woman or will ever want any other woman ever again.’ He heard the words, thick and half-crazed with emotion, being dragged from his throat, and he knew that they were true. He could see shock, delight and yearning in Tilly’s eyes. He took her mouth in a kiss of fierce, consuming possession, picking her up and carrying her over to the bed.

Tilly moaned when Silas put her down, unable to bear even for a handful of seconds not to have him touching her or to be touching him.

She could see him kneeling over her, and she watched as he bent his head and traced a line of kisses down her body. His hands cupped and held her hips, and she shuddered when he anointed her hipbones in turn with slow, tender kisses and then moved lower. She could feel his fingers sliding through her ready wetness as he deliberately parted the outer lips of her sex. She could see him looking at her as he touched her.

Her flesh was flushed and swollen with arousal, making Silas ache to taste her, to feel the sharp shudders of her orgasm against his mouth. He wanted to slide his fingers through the wetness of her sex, between the fullness of the labia, and then part them so that he could stroke his tongue along the path made by his fingertip. He wanted to take the small responsive bead of her clitoris and caress it until he had brought her to the edge he had already reached, and then he wanted to slide slowly and deeply the full length of her, so that he was filling her, and she was holding him, and her flesh was taking him and using him for its pleasure, making that pleasure his own.

What he wanted, he recognised, was a degree of intimacy with her, a connection with her, a completeness with her that was outside any sexual experience he had ever had previously, or imagined he could want. Because what was happening for him wasn’t something he only wanted to experience on a sexual level. What he wanted from her went way beyond that into a realm he had always thought more akin to make-believe and fiction than reality.

Tilly gave a small aching moan. Silas bent his head and parted her labia, stroking his tongue-tip the full length of her sex.

It was more than Tilly could stand. She cried out and dug her nails into his shoulders, clinging desperately to the edge of her own self-control.

‘No,’ she told him fiercely. ‘Not yet. Not until you’re inside me. That’s how I want it to be, Silas.’ Determined tears sprang into her eyes as she looked at him. ‘It has to be both of us. I want you, Silas,’ she insisted. ‘I want you inside me. I want that so much.’

She felt him move, heard the brief rustle of a wrapper being opened and then discarded, and then blissfully he was holding her, kissing her, sliding his hands down to her hips and lifting her. Hungrily Tilly wrapped her legs around him, arching up eagerly to meet his first slow, sweet thrust into her.

Silas shuddered as he felt her muscles grip and hold him. Even this was a new kind of pleasure. Where he had previously known experience, with Tilly there was freshness, an untutored naturalness that was so much more erotic. Her body welcomed him joyfully and eagerly, offering all its pleasures to him, wanting him to take them, wanting him to thrust deeper and harder until he fitted her so well that they might almost have been one flesh.

Was this what love was? Silas wondered. Was this why he had always refused to believe in it before? Because he had been waiting for Tilly?

She cried out his name, her flesh gripping him, pulsing fiercely.

Through the fierce contractions of her orgasm Tilly felt Silas’s final deep thrust as he joined her in the soaring ecstasy that was binding them both together and taking them to infinity.

Silas moved away from the window and looked towards the bed. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. He hadn’t been able to do anything since they had made love except go over and over inside his head the now familiar journey that had led from his first meeting with Tilly to this. He felt as though his whole life had suddenly veered off course and gone out of his control. How was it possible for him to have changed so much so quickly? How was it possible for him to feel so differently?

He made his way back to the bed. Not being within touching distance of Tilly made him feel as though a part of him was missing, that he was somehow incomplete.

As he slid back the duvet he realised that she was awake.

‘You know what’s going on, don’t you?’

‘I think so, and it isn’t something I wanted to happen,’ Tilly answered, trying to make her voice sound light and careless but hearing it crack as easily as he’d cracked apart the protective casing she had put around her heart.

‘Falling in love wasn’t exactly on my agenda either,’ Silas told her dryly.

‘Perhaps if we try really hard we can stop it.’

There was enough light from the moon for her to see the cynically amused look Silas was giving her. ‘Like we’ve already tried once tonight, you mean?’ he derided, causing Tilly to give a small shiver.

‘Silas, I don’t want to love you. I don’t want to love anyone. Loving someone means being hurt when they stop loving you.’

‘I won’t stop loving you, Tilly. I couldn’t.’ It was, Silas recognised, the truth.

‘This is crazy,’Tilly whispered, but she knew that her protests meant nothing and that her own emotions were overwhelming her.

‘Love is crazy. It’s well known that it’s a form of madness.’

‘Maybe it’s just the sex?’ she suggested. ‘I mean…’

Silas shook his head.

‘No, it isn’t just the sex,’ he assured her. ‘You can trust me on that.’

‘There can’t be love without trust. And honesty,’Tilly whispered solemnly.

This was all so new to her, and so very precious and vulnerable. Acknowledging her feelings felt like holding a new baby. Her heart did a slow high-dive. A baby. Silas’s baby.

Trust and honesty. Silas reached for Tilly. He was going to have to tell her the truth about himself, and his reason for taking Joe’s place.

But not tonight. Not now, when all he wanted to do was hold her and kiss her and feel the responsive silky heat of her body, taking him and holding him, while he showed her his love.

Tilly glanced anxiously at Silas. He had hardly spoken to her as he drove them back to the castle, and whatever he was thinking his thoughts didn’t look as though they were happy ones.

‘Second thoughts?’ she asked him lightly.

‘About the wisdom of returning to the castle? Yes. About us? No,’ Silas answered her truthfully. ‘What about you?’

‘I rather think I’ve made it obvious how I feel.’ They had made love again before breakfast, and now her body ached heavily and pleasurably with an unfamiliar, satisfied lassitude. She touched the comfortable weight of the ring on her left hand and then coloured self-consciously when she saw the gleam in Silas’s eyes.

‘I wish we could go back to London and get to know one another properly, instead of having to go back to the castle,’Tilly admitted. ‘And I can’t help worrying about my mother. It’s obvious that Art’s family doesn’t want him to marry her.’

‘My guess is that if they don’t manage to break them up before they marry, they’ll make her life hell afterwards. To be honest, I’m surprised she can’t see that for herself.’

‘Ma only sees what she wants to see,’ Tilly told him. ‘She can be very naive like that. I just don’t want her to be hurt. When her last marriage broke up she was desperately unhappy. It was the first time she hadn’t been the one to end things. If Art decides not to go ahead with the wedding, I don’t know what it will do to her. Ma’s one of those women who doesn’t feel she’s a viable human being unless she’s got a man in her life.’ Tilly smiled ruefully. ‘That’s probably more than you want to know. I’m sorry. But this is the first time I’ve felt close enough to someone to be able to be talk honestly about how I feel without thinking I’m being disloyal.’

‘What about your father?’

‘Oh, I love Dad, of course. But he disapproves of Ma, and they don’t see eye to eye. I’d feel I was letting her down if I told him how much I worry about her, and why. They were so unsuited—but that’s the trouble about falling in love, isn’t it? You don’t always know until it’s too late that you aren’t compatible. And sometimes even when you are it isn’t enough.’

‘Sometimes a couple meet and are fortunate enough to recognise that what they share goes far beyond mere compatibility,’ Silas told her. ‘Like soul mates.’

Tilly felt a fine thrill of the most intense emotion she had ever experienced run through her as he turned to look at her.

It moved her beyond words that Silas should say such a thing to her, almost as though he already knew how vitally important it was to her that the love growing between them should be perfect in every way.

And yet the closer they got to the castle the more she sensed that Silas seemed to be distancing himself from her, retreating to a place where he didn’t want her to follow him. His answers to her efforts to make conversation became terse and unencouraging, giving her the message that he preferred the privacy of his own silence to any attempt to create a more intimate mood between them.

She told herself that she was being over-sensitive, and that what to her felt like a distancing tactic was probably nothing more than a desire to concentrate on his driving.

The closer they got to the castle the more Silas recognised the dual agenda he would now be operating under. From the outset he had been totally clear to himself about his purpose in stepping into Joe’s shoes. He had told himself that deceiving a young woman he didn’t know, while regrettable, would be justified by the exposure that would be the end result of his research. But he hadn’t anticipated then that the impossible would happen and he would fall in love with Tilly.

Now that he had, his deceit had taken on a much more personal turn. He was now in effect lying by default to the woman he loved. He was lying to her about his real identity, the real nature of his work, the fact that he was using her as a cover to screen his own agenda.

For each and every one of those lies he had an explanation he believed she would understand and accept—after all, he had not set out with the deliberate intention of deceiving her. But the highly emotionally charged atmosphere of the castle, where they would be surrounded by Art and his family, was not, in Silas’s opinion, the best place for him to admit totally what he had done, or his reasons—even though normally his first priority would have been to tell her the truth. For that he felt he—they—needed real privacy, and the security of being able to discuss the issue without any onlookers.

Knowing Tilly as he believed he did know her now, he couldn’t ignore the instinct that told him that if his suspicions about Art’s involvement in Jay Byerly’s underhand dealings were confirmed, Tilly would at the very least want to warn her mother about the true nature of the man she was planning to marry. And if she did that, Silas thought it entirely likely that Annabelle would go straight to Art and beg him to deny the accusations being levelled against him.

Silas knew the last thing his publishers would want was to be threatened with a lawsuit by some expensive lawyer before his book was even written. And he certainly had no intention of putting himself in a position where the truths he had already worked so long to make public were silenced before they had been heard.

Tilly would, of course, be hurt, and no doubt angry when he told her the truth on their return to London, but he felt sure that once he had explained the reasons he had not been able to confide in her she would understand and forgive him. But while logically it made sense not to say anything to Tilly yet, loving her as he did meant that he wanted to share his every thought and feeling with her. It was for her own sake that he could not do it, he reminded himself. She was already doing enough worrying about her mother, a woman who in Silas’s opinion ought to recognise how truly fortunate she was to have such a wonderful daughter.

Something was on Silas’s mind, Tilly decided. In another few minutes they would be reaching the castle and the opportunity to ask him would be gone. She took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘You look rather preoccupied. Is something wrong?’

Her awareness of his concern caused Silas to turn his head and look at her, and to go on looking at her. ‘Yes,’ he told her truthfully, adding, not quite so truthfully, ‘The closer we get to the castle the more I wish I could snatch you up and take you somewhere we could really be on our own. There’s so much I want to learn about you, Tilly. So much I want to know about you and so much I want you to know about me. And, selfishly, I want you all to myself so that we can do that. I’ve never thought of myself as a possessive man, but now I’m beginning to realise how little I really know myself—because where you are concerned I feel very unwilling to share you with anyone else.’

‘Don’t say any more,’ Tilly begged. ‘Otherwise I’ll be pleading with you to turn around and drive back to the hotel.’

‘The first thing I intend to do when we reach the castle is take you upstairs to our room and make love to you,’ Silas told her thickly.

‘I rather think that we’ll be called upon to explain ourselves to Cissie-Rose first, and apologise for putting her to the trouble of having to drive back alone,’ Tilly warned him wryly. ‘She won’t be happy to see us together, Silas.’ That was the closest Tilly felt she wanted to go in telling Silas that she was aware that Cissie-Rose’s interest in him was sexual and predatory.

‘We don’t owe her any explanations. She chose to leave in a strop and abandon us because I’d shown her that I wasn’t interested in what she was offering.’

Tilly heard the hardness in his voice and winced a little.

Silas saw her small movement and shook his head. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy on her, Tilly. She doesn’t deserve it.’

‘I can’t blame her for wanting you when I want you so much myself,’ Tilly told him honestly.

Silas drove in to the courtyard, turning to look at her as he stopped the four-wheel drive to say softly, ‘Promise me something, Tilly?’

Something? Her heart was so filled with love and happiness she wanted to promise him everything. ‘What?’ she asked instead.

‘Promise me that you’ll always be as honest and open with me as you are now. I love it when you tell me that you want me. And, just as soon as we get the chance, I intend to show you just how much.’

‘Yes, poor Tilly needs to go and lie down. She started with a headache on the way back—didn’t you, darling?’

Tilly shot Silas a reproving look, but he was too busy convincing her mother that she wasn’t going to be well enough to emerge from their bedroom for at least a couple of hours.

‘Well, I’m sure that Art and the boys won’t mind keeping you company in the bar, Silas,’ Annabelle told him, before turning to Tilly to say reproachfully, ‘I wanted to show you my dress and the sketches Lucy has done for the flowers. Perhaps if you just took a couple of aspirin you wouldn’t need to lie down…?’

Tilly wavered. She was so used to answering her mother’s needs when she was with her, and Annabelle was looking at her like a disappointed child deprived of a special treat, making her feel wretchedly guilty. But Silas had reached for her hand and was very discreetly, but very sensually, caressing the pulse-point on the inside of her wrist. Her desire for him was turning her bones and her conscience to jelly.

She looked at her mother and lifted her free hand to her forehead. ‘Silas is right, Ma.’ she told her. ‘I really do need to lie down.’

Five minutes later, when Silas locked the door to their room and leaned on it for good measure, taking her in his arms and drawing her very deliberately into the cradle of his hips so that she could feel his arousal, Tilly shook her head at him.

‘I don’t believe I’ve just done that. I’ve never lied to my mother before…’

‘When there’s a conflict of interests I’m delighted that you opted to choose me,’ Silas teased her.

Tilly didn’t respond to his smile as readily as he had expected. ‘Loving someone shouldn’t mean abandoning your own moral code. Telling my mother I had a headache when I haven’t…’

‘What would you have preferred to do? Tell her that we wanted to make love?’

Tilly exhaled in defeat. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But it still doesn’t make me feel good.’

‘Maybe this will, though.’

Silas was teasing her with small, unsatisfying kisses that made her reach up for him and pull his head down to hers…

‘You remember that TV show Dallas? Well, I’m telling you that was nothing compared with the reality of how the oil business was in my father’s time. I started working in the family business straight out of school. My father said that was the best way to learn.’ Art reached for his drink and emptied his glass, demanding, ‘Come on Dwight, I thought you were playing bartender. Set them up again, will you?’

It was almost dinnertime, and to judge from his slurred voice and red face Silas suspected that Art had been drinking for the best part of the afternoon. He had greeted them affably enough when they had finally come downstairs dressed for dinner, and had then begun reminiscing about the early days of his family’s oil business. Silas, sensing that this might be the breakthrough he needed, had encouraged him to keep talking by asking him judicially timed questions. He suspected from the bored expressions on the faces of Art’s sons-in-law that they had heard all Art’s stories before.

‘I imagine you must have known all the big players in the old oil world?’ Silas suggested casually.

‘Sure did,’ Art agreed boastfully. ‘I knew ’em all.’

‘Even Jay Byerly?’

‘Yep. He was some guy, was Jay. He had a handle on just about everything that was goin’ on.’

‘I know that the shareholders voted him off the board of his own company in the end, but no one ever said why.’ While they had been talking Silas had filled up Art’s glass, making sure that he didn’t fill up his own.

‘For goodness’ sake, no one wants to hear all those old stories all over again. Poor Annabelle will be so bored she’ll change her mind about wanting to marry you if you don’t change the subject,’ Cissie-Rose exclaimed with acid sweetness, sweeping into the room in a dress that was more suitable for a full-scale diplomatic reception rather than what was supposed to be a quiet family dinner. ‘You really mustn’t encourage him, Silas,’ she added, giving Silas and Tilly the kind of posed and patently artificial smile that showed off her excellent teeth and the cold enmity in her eyes. ‘Are you really sure you’re over your headache, Tilly?’ she asked. ‘Only, if you don’t mind my saying so, you really don’t look well. There’s nothing like a headache for making a person look run-down.’

‘Annabelle, why don’t you girls go and talk wedding talk in one of the other rooms?’ Art suggested.

Tilly suspected that he had been enjoying basking in the attention of Silas’s good-mannered social questions, and that he wasn’t very pleased about Cissie-Rose’s interruption. Although he wasn’t exactly slurring his words, he had had what to Tilly seemed to be rather a lot to drink. Her doubts about the wisdom of her mother marrying him were growing by the hour.

‘Silas is just being polite, Dad. Why on earth should he be interested in what happened over thirty years ago? Unless, of course, someone’s thinking of making a film of Jay’s life and you’re hoping to be invited to try for the lead part, Silas.’

Cissie-Rose’s claws were definitely unsheathed now, Tilly recognised. The other woman’s cattiness made her want to place herself physically in front of Silas to protect him. Although the thought of Silas needing anyone defending him, least of all her, made her smile to herself.

‘Ignore her, Silas,’Art instructed, giving his daughter a baleful look. ‘You’re right. There was a scandal Jay was involved in that threatened to blow him and the business sky-high. Luckily a few of the big old boys called in some of their debts and managed to get it all quietened down. Jay had been buying up oil leases and then—’

‘Daddy, I don’t think you should say any more,’ Cissie-Rose interrupted her father sharply. ‘It’s all in the past now, anyway. Annabelle, I have to say that those sketches you were showing me for the flowers are just so pretty.’

It wasn’t worth pushing Art any further, Silas decided. There would still be plenty of opportunity for him to pick up their conversation between now and the wedding on New Year’s Eve. All he had to do was to make sure he mixed Art a jugful of extra-strong whiskey sour.