‘No? Are you sure?’
His mouth was brushing hers. How could such a cool and remote man have such a warm and sensual mouth? Like fire under ice, or her favourite dessert, hot sauce on cold ice cream. Mmm, delicious…Just like the feel of Silas’s mouth on her own, in fact. Mmm.
As she sighed her appreciation of his kiss, she moved closer to him and put her own arms around his neck.
His tongue probed her lips, slowly but oh, so deliberately, letting her know that he would not stop until she had given him what he wanted. Her body shivered with pleasure as she let him thrust firmly between her half-parted lips. Oh, but he was good. Or was it just that it was just so long since she had last been kissed? Her whole body had become the ice cream now, melting in the heat of the deliberately slow and sensually symbolic thrust of his tongue within the eager wetness of her mouth.
His hand claimed her breast, moulding it firmly and then caressing it rhythmically, his fingertips teasing her nipple before his hand slid back so that this palm was rubbing erotically against it, the caress repeated so firmly and insistently that her whole body began pulse to the rhythmic movement of his hand. Instinctively she wanted to return the intimacy of his touch, to hold the stiff hot flesh of his erection in her hand so that she could explore its veined hardness and see his pleasure whilst she did so.
It had been so long since she had last had sex. She had truly believed that she wasn’t bothered, but now she realised that she must be, because she was already aching with frantic need for Silas.
Silas!
Abruptly she broke the kiss.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘We shouldn’t be doing this…’
‘Of course we should,’ Silas told her promptly. ‘We’re engaged.’
When she looked at him, he added softly, ‘And, more importantly, you want to.’
‘Do you?’
The way he looked at her as he took hold of her hand and placed it against his erection made her heart turn over inside her chest.
‘What do you think?’ he demanded.
Julia was too caught up in the discovery that his bank account wasn’t the only thing about him that was larger than average to make any kind of response.
A part of her was thinking that this couldn’t be her, actually thinking of having sex with Silas, but another and much more assertive part was saying it would hate her for ever if she didn’t allow it to satisfy the fiercely urgent need that had taken hold of her.
Even so…she had her responsibilities…
‘I ought to go over to the hotel and just check…’
‘How do I know that isn’t just an excuse to sneak off and indulge your shoe habit?’ Silas teased her.
She had a shoe habit? She didn’t remember. In fact she couldn’t think of anything other than what it was going to feel like to lie naked under Silas whilst he filled her with his gorgeous thick strength until he had satisfied the ache that was pulsing from her clitoris right up to her womb.
‘Okay, come on,’ Silas announced, his voice suddenly crisp. ‘Let’s get unpacked, and then go down and get some dinner.’
Unpacked? Dinner? There was only one hunger she wanted to satisfy right now. And as for clothes…
Silas watched her with a small satisfied smile. She wanted him and she wanted him badly. That was good. Establishing a sexual bond with her prior to persuading her to marry him might not have been part of his original game plan—sexual satisfaction within their marriage hadn’t been particularly high on his original list of priorities—but a plan could be adapted. Why shouldn’t he make use of such an excellent opportunity, especially when doing so would be very pleasurable for them both? And not just pleasurable in the short term, but potentially very pleasurable in the long term as well, bonding Julia to him in a way that could only be beneficial to their marriage.
The truth, if he was honest with himself, was that the speed and intensity of his arousal had caught him totally off guard. He prided himself on his sexual self-control, but right now he could feel himself straining and pulsing with his need to push slowly and deeply into Julia’s wet heat until she had taken all of him, and then, equally slowly, to ease himself out again before thrusting slickly back in, slowly and deeply, until she raked his back with her nails and held him in her, whilst she moaned her pleasure and urged him to move harder and faster…
Abruptly he made himself think of something else. He might have decided to marry Julia eight years ago, but since he hadn’t spent those years fantasising about having sex with her, he saw no reason why he should allow himself to do so now.
He was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that if he hadn’t already been planning to marry Julia, then the intensity of his physical desire for her might have been a problem. And there was no place for problems in Silas’s life—just as there was no place for situations he could not control.
His mother was a shrewd and emotionally strong woman, but as a young widow she had bowed to the pressure put on her by her late husband’s financial advisers and accepted the Foundation’s trustees’ insistence on helping her to shape and direct the way in which Silas was groomed to take on the role which would one day be his almost from the day of his birth.
The burden of being responsible for the future of the Foundation and its billions of dollars was not one that could be taken on lightly. Her husband, Silas’s father, had died before his twenty-fifth birthday, and these trustees even then had already been in their late middle age, considering the heat and excitement of youthful passion something to be deplored and strictly controlled. Through their guidance and teaching Silas had not just learned how to protect the Foundation, but had also absorbed almost from his cradle certain old-fashioned attitudes to life. Silas had, in short, been raised to put the Foundation first, to exercise self-control, and to be practical and unemotional. The trustees were all dead now, but he knew how much they would have approved of his decision to make Julia his wife. He saw what he had learned from the old men who had been his male role models as an asset, and indeed it was one he fully intended to pass on to his own sons.
Julia watched him, wondering what he was thinking and if he was as astonished and bemused by what was happening to them as she was herself.
That was the trouble with Silas: one could never tell what he was thinking.
She picked up her bag and searched for her mobile. She hadn’t had time to charge it before leaving Majorca, so she had switched it off to preserve what was left of the battery.
Her fingers closed over her phone and she extracted it from the bottom of her handbag and switched it on, making a small moue as she saw how many messages she had to check through.
‘You should upgrade to a BlackBerry,’ Silas told her as he observed what she was doing.
‘I should. But right now the business isn’t making enough money for that.’
Silas frowned. ‘I saw Blayne using one.’
‘Oh, yes, Nick’s got one. But then he does a lot more travelling than anyone else.’
She started to check though her messages, slightly alarmed to see how many there were from her client.
As she played them her alarm became anxiety, and then dismayed disbelief. Switching off her mobile, she turned to Silas.
‘I’ve got to get over to the venue. There’s been some kind of mix-up and I need to get it sorted out asap.’
‘What kind of mix-up?’ Silas demanded.
‘When the client asked to look over the private dining room the hotel told her that the booking for the celebratory dinner party had been cancelled. Of course she immediately got in touch with Lucy, and both she and Lucy have been trying to get hold of me to find out what’s going on. I’ve got to get over there. There’s obviously been some mistake. I made the booking myself, and there’s no way I would have cancelled it—not after all the trouble we had persuading the hotel to let us have exclusive use of the room and the terrace.’
‘Can’t you phone them?’ Silas asked.
&
nbsp; Julia shook her head.
‘I could, but I’d much rather go over and sort things out in person.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Silas told her.
‘Thank you, but no.’ Julia refused his offer firmly. ‘This is my problem, not yours. There’s obviously been some kind of mix-up, and hopefully it won’t take too long to get it sorted out.’ She was still wearing the clothes in which she had travelled, and she felt grubby and tired, but her own comfort would have to wait.