‘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…