Jessica Hart - Four Christmas Treats

This wasn’t how a ring like this should be given and worn, and yet somehow just by wearing it she felt as though she had committed to something. Some message, some instinctive female awareness the ring was communicating to her. A sense of pain and foreboding filled her, but it was too late now. Silas’s ring was on her finger, and they were coming into Segovia, the lights from the town illuminating the interior of the car.

‘What was she like?’ Tilly asked softly, the question instinctive and unstoppable.

‘Who?’

‘Your mother.’

Silas wasn’t going to answer her, but somehow he heard himself saying quietly and truthfully, ‘She was a conservationist, wise and loving, and full of life. She died when I was eight. She was in a protest. Some violence broke out and my mother fell and hit her head. She died almost immediately.’

Tilly could feel the weight of the silence that followed his almost dispassionate words. Almost dispassionate, but not quite. She had sensed, even if she had not actually heard, the emotion behind them. She looked down at the ring and touched it gently, in tribute to the woman to whom it had belonged.

Silas had no idea why he had told Tilly about his mother. He rarely thought about her death these days. He was very fond of his stepmother, who had shown him understanding and kindness, and who had always respected his relationship with his father, and he certainly loved Joe. Damn all over-emotional, sentimental women. A wise man kept them out of his life, and didn’t make the mistake of getting involved with them in any way. There was only one reason he was here with Tilly now, and that was quite simply because she was providing him with the opportunity to get close to Art. And if that meant that he was using her, then he wasn’t going to feel guilty about that. She, after all, was equally guilty of using him.

‘I hadn’t expected the castle to be quite so remote,’Tilly admitted, nearly half an hour after they had driven through Segovia, with its picturesque buildings draped in pretty Christmas decorations. ‘Nor that it would be so high up in the mountains.’

They had already passed through the ski centres of Valdesqui and Navacerrada, looking as festive as a Christmas card, and although the snow-covered scenery outside the car was stunningly beautiful in the clearness of the early-evening moonlight, Tilly was surprised that her mother, who loved sunshine and heat, had chosen such a cold place for her wedding.

They turned off the main road onto a narrow track that wound up the steep mountainside, past fir trees thick with snow, towards the white-dusted, fairy-tale castle perched at its summit, lights shining welcomingly from its many tall, narrow windows. The castle was cleverly floodlit, heightening the impression that it had come straight out of a fairy story, and the surrounding snow was bathed in an almost iridescent pale pink glow

‘It’s beautiful,’ Tilly murmured appreciatively. Silas glanced at her, about to tell her cynically that it looked like something dreamed up by a Hollywood studio. But then he saw the way the moonlight filling the car illuminated her face, dusting her skin with silvery light and betraying her quickened breathing.

Extraordinarily and unbelievably his mind switched track, and suddenly he was asking himself if he held her under him and kissed her, with a man’s fierce need for a woman’s body, would that pulse in her throat jump and burn the way the pulse in her wrist had done when he had held her hand? And would that pulse then run like a cord to the stiffening peak of her breast when he circled the place where the smooth pale flesh gave way to the soft pink aureole? Would that too swell in erotic response to his touch, a moan of pleasure suppressed deep in her throat causing her pulse to jump higher, while he rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, savouring each further intimacy, knowing what her small restless movement meant? Knowing, too, that she would be wet and hungry for him—

Abruptly Silas blocked off his thoughts. It startled him to discover just how far and how fast they had travelled on their own erotic journey without his permission. He wasn’t given to fantasising about sex with a woman he was in a relationship with, never mind one who was virtually a complete stranger to him. He didn’t need to fantasise about sex, since it was always on offer to him should he want it. But, just as he was revolted by the thought of eating junk food, so, equally, he was turned off by the idea of indulging in junk sex. Which was probably why he was feeling like this now, with an erection so hard and swollen that it actually felt painful. He had been so busy working these last few months that he hadn’t had time to get involved in a relationship. The ex with whom he occasionally had mutually enjoyable release sex had decided to get married, and he couldn’t really remember the last time he had spent so much time in close proximity to a woman in a non-sexual way. And that , no doubt, was why his body was reacting like a hormone junkie who had the promise of a massive fix.

Their driver turned the four-wheel drive into the inner courtyard of the castle, coming to a stop outside the impressive iron-studded wooden doors.

Tilly smiled at the driver as he held open her door for her and helped her out. The courtyard had been cleared of snow, but she could still smell it on the early-evening air, and there was a shine on the courtyard floor that warned her the stones underfoot would be icy.

The huge double doors had been flung open, and Tilly goggled to see two fully liveried footmen stepping outside. Liveried footmen! She was so taken aback she forgot to watch where she was walking, and gasped with shock as she stepped onto a patch of ice and started to lose her balance.

Hard, sure hands gripped her arms, dragging her back against the safety of an equally hard male body.

And there she stood, her back pressed tightly into Silas’s body, his arms wrapped securely around her, as her mother and the man Tilly presumed must be her mother’s new fiancé stood in the open doorway, watching them. Her reaction was instinctive and disastrous. She turned her head to look at Silas, intending to demand that he release her, but when she realised how close she was to his mouth all she could do was look at it instead, while the hot pulse of lust inside her became a positive volcano of female desire. She lifted her hand—surely not because she had actually intended to touch him, to trace the outline of that firmly shaped male mouth with its sensually full bottom lip? Surely she had not actually intended to do that? No, of course not. She simply wasn’t that kind of woman. How could she be when she had spent the better part of her young adult life training herself not to be? All she had wanted to do was to push her hair back off her face. And that was what she would have done too, if Silas hadn’t caught hold of her hand.

The hand on which she was wearing his mother’s ring. A hard knot of emotions filled her chest cavity and blocked her throat. An overwhelming sense of sadness and love and hope.

‘Silas…’ Her lips framed his name and her eyes filled with soft warm tears.

What the hell was a going on? Silas wondered in disbelief. One minute he was reacting instinctively to save an idiotic female from falling over; the next he was holding her in his arms and getting an emotional message he couldn’t block, feeling as if he was experiencing something of such importance that it could be the pivot on which the whole of his future life would turn.

He watched as Tilly’s lips framed his name, and felt the aching drag of his own sexual need to bend his head to hers and to explore the shape and texture of her mouth. Not just once, but over and over again, until it was imprinted on his senses for ever. So that he could recall its memory within a heartbeat. So that he could hold it to him for always.