Deal With the Devil--3 Book Box Set

‘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 c

hampagne 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.