Jessica Hart - Four Christmas Treats

Tilly was hazily aware that what she was doing was very dangerous—that Silas was very dangerous. But the room was so cold that it seemed to be numbing her ability to respond and react in a normal way. And Silas felt so warm, lying on top of her, even if he was tormenting her with those tiny kisses that were compelling her to arch up to him, wanting something much more intimate. She shuddered with pleasure when he spread his fingers against her scalp and held her head while he plundered her mouth with the intimate thrust of his tongue, over and over again, until she was shuddering in the grip of the most intense physical longing she had ever experienced.

The shock of her own sexual arousal was enough to bring her to her senses and make her push Silas away. She was trembling from head to foot and felt foolishly close to tears. What she was feeling made her feel both vulnerable and confused. She didn’t even know how it had happened—or why.

‘You had no right to do that,’ she told him, almost tearfully.

‘I thought it was what you wanted.’

‘What? How could you think that? I’d just told you that I wanted you to leave.’

Silas looked into her flushed, mutinous face and a sensation, an emotion he couldn’t recognise, speared through the armour-plating of his cynicism. He lifted his hand to his chest, as though he could actually feel the sharp, unfamiliar pain as a physical reality, and then let it drop to his side as he pushed the feeling back out of the way.

‘And I’ve just shown you that I don’t want to,’ he responded softly. ‘In fact…right now I don’t even think I want to leave this room.’ A corrosive inner voice, no doubt prompted by his conscience, was demanding if not a retraction then at least an explanation of this outright lie. But he had a job to do, a truth to find, and he needed real, hard facts. As far as Silas was concerned it was his ethical duty to get those facts, and that came before any duty he might have to maintaining the same degree of truth within this current aspect of his personal life.

As ugly and unpleasant as it sounded, Tilly was using him—and he was using her. Both of them could claim that they were being forced into doing so in order to benefit others, of course. And that made it acceptable? Maybe not, but it certainly made it necessary, Silas told himself harshly.

Tilly’s mouth had gone dry. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Her heart was pounding so heavily she wanted to press her hand against her chest to calm it.

‘If you’re trying to imply that you…’ She picked her words as carefully as she could, but they still literally stuck it her throat. ‘That you want me, then I don’t believe you,’ she finally managed to say. ‘It’s less than ten minutes since you were warning me off and accusing me of hiring you for sex,’ she reminded him.

‘Ten minutes ago I hadn’t kissed you or touched you,’ Silas told her meaningfully. ‘Ten minutes ago I hadn’t been so turned on by the way your body was responding to my touch that right now I can’t think beyond taking that response to its natural conclusion—to our mutual benefit.’

To Silas’s chagrin his own words were conjuring up the most erotic images inside his head, and his body was responding powerfully to them. So powerfully that it was making it clear to him that, no matter what his brain might have to say, his body was more than willing to have sex with Tilly.

The room might still be icy cold, but suddenly Tilly felt far too hot. He had to be lying to her, and she had better remember that. Instead of…Instead of what? Wanting him to be telling the truth? Wanting him to mean what he was saying? Wanting him to want her? Was she crazy? This kind of thing was her mother’s emotional territory, not hers. She knew better. Didn’t she? She started to shiver. She didn’t want to stay here in this room with Silas any longer—a room that she could have sworn now smelled subtly of their mutual arousal, and his deceit, and her own foolish longing. She wanted to go back downstairs, where she would be safer—and warmer.

‘It’s your own fault that I kissed you, you know,’ Silas told her.

Tilly had had enough. ‘Look, I’ve already told you, I did not hire you to have sex with me,’she insisted fiercely.

‘I didn’t mean that.’ Silas was smiling so tenderly at her that her insides twisted with need. ‘I meant that it’s your fault because when you offered me the chance to leave I knew that I couldn’t, and that in turn told me how much I want you.’

Tilly stared at him. It really wasn’t fair of fate to inflict this on her. It was almost Christmas, for heaven’s sake, and she was very vulnerable. Silas had touched a note, a chord deep within her, that she badly wanted to ignore. It would be far too dangerous to let herself believe that he meant what he had said, and even more dangerous to admit how much she wanted him to have meant it.

‘We’ve only just met,’ she reminded him. ‘We hardly know each other…’ She was almost stuttering, she realised, as she squirmed inwardly at the sound of her own ridiculous words.

‘So? Isn’t fate giving us an opportunity to remedy that?’ He smiled at her again, and Tilly felt her heart literally flip over inside her chest as though it were a pancake. ‘She’s even ensured that we’ll be sharing a room, and a bed, and she’s provided the added incentive of the need to share our body heat just to keep warm.’

Tilly could feel not just her face but her whole body suddenly growing hot as she curled her toes into her shoes and looked helplessly down at the bed. Things like this just did not happen to her. She wasn’t that sort of person. She was too sensible, too cautious, too wary…too damn dull! She looked at Silas.

‘We are engaged, after all. Who knows what might happen, or where fate might lead us?’ As he spoke he reached out, sliding his fingers between her own so that they were intimately held together. ‘Why don’t we just let her take us where she wishes?’ he suggested sexily.

‘No, no, no! I don’t want to hear any more.’ Tilly put her hands over her ears in despair. ‘I’m going downstairs.’

‘Then I’m coming with you,’ Silas said promptly. He wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to end their ‘engagement’ in his absence.

‘OH, THERE you are, darlings. Oh, Tilly, you haven’t even changed for dinner.’ There was a reproachful note in her mother’s voice that made Tilly’s stomach muscles clench defensively, but she stood her ground.

‘But you said it had been arranged that we’d all be eating in our rooms,’ she reminded her mother, as calmly as she could.

‘Oh, well, yes, I did say that. But I must have misunderstood the girls, because they’ve both come down dressed for dinner. Tilly, why don’t you pop back up to your room and get changed into something pretty and formal?You’ll have time, because the chef says that it will be another half-hour before everything will be ready.’

It was becoming increasingly plain to Tilly that Art’s daughters were determined to behave as selfishly and make life as difficult for her mother as they could.

‘I haven’t unpacked yet, Ma,’ she reminded her mother. ‘And it’s freezing in our room.’

‘Oh, darling, please don’t be such a crosspatch. What on earth will Art’s girls think?’

‘I daresay I might be sweeter if I had a warm bedroom,’ Tilly couldn’t help responding. ‘And what exactly do you mean—something pretty and formal?’

‘Well, the girls are both wearing the most gorgeous vintage Halston gowns. I’ve told them how good-looking you are, Silas, and I think they want to have a look at you,’Annabelle confided, adding blithely, ‘It’s dinner jackets for the men, of course—and wait until you see the drawing room and the dining room, Tilly. They are gorgeous—pure Versailles.’