by Penny Jordan
‘If Dorland had given Prêt a Party money then it’s pretty likely it would have found its way into Blayne’s pocket—and then we would have a repetition of what happened in Positano.’
‘No, Dorland has definitely paid for everything himself,’ Julia told him, adding with relief, ‘Thank goodness.’
* * *
Julia was still thinking about Lucy several hours later, when she knocked on the door of Dorland’s suite.
‘Julia! What—no fabbie jewels?’ Dorland exclaimed as he opened the door to her himself and immediately examined her left hand. ‘Don’t tell me the engagement is off?’
Julia laughed.
‘Not yet,’ she answered mischievously. She had no intention of giving Dorland any kind of hint that she and Silas were actually married, and she certainly wasn’t going to let him guess why.
Dorland pouted, and then batted what Julia saw were fake turquoise eyelashes at her.
‘I thought he was going to load you down with heirlooms.’
‘The insurers wouldn’t let him,’ Julia answered, straight-faced.
‘You must watch that, Julia. There is nothing worse than a mean billionaire,’ Dorland warned her, ignoring her comment.
‘Silas isn’t mean.’
‘Oooh, so it is a love thang, then, is it? I thought so! Sex is all very well, but take it from me, diamonds are better.’
‘Speaking of which, did the Tiffany necklace turn up?’ Julia asked him.
‘No, and Tiffany are being absolutely howwid to me about it. You wouldn’t credit it. Still, we won’t talk about that now. Not when all I want to talk about is my fabby party. Everyone is coming...a certain celebrity European princess, plus an even more celebrity Hollywood couple—you’ll know who I mean. They are all so famous I’m not allowed to so much as breathe their names,’ he added coyly. ‘Just the whole of the A list are going to be here—even a certain international footballer and his wife are coming, and guess who they are bringing with them?’
‘Er...who?’ Julia asked dutifully.
‘Only Jon Belton!’
Julia looked suitably impressed at the mention of the ultra-famous pop singer.
‘Oh, Jules, I am just sooo excited,’ Dorland exclaimed excitedly. ‘It is going to be the party of the year—and of course A-List Life will have an exclusive on it. Now, sweet, down to business. I’ve already spoken to the hotel people and arranged for a piano, but you know, I was thinking—wouldn’t it be fun to have the balloons printed with a piano motif—black balloons with a white piano, perhaps encrusted with just the teeny-weeniest bit of diamanté? So retro and so Liberace. I can see it now!’
So, unfortunately, could Julia.
‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Of course I do. Why? Don’t you?’
‘Well, it could be just a tad over the top, don’t you think?’
‘Julia, I am Dorland Chesterfield—nothing I do could ever be too over the top,’ Dorland told her theatrically.
* * *
‘How’s it going?’
Julia shook her head as Silas reached for her hand and held it firmly in his own. He had been waiting for her when she finally left Dorland’s suite, and now they were walking back to their villa through the hotel gardens.
‘Dorland is wearing false eyelashes—turquoise false eyelashes. Apparently he’s going to be wearing turquoise-coloured contact lenses for the party. And he’s going to be sprayed with fake tan.’
‘I’m beginning to fear the worst,’ Silas murmured wryly.
‘He’s had a shirt specially made for him by Roberto Cavalli, and he’s going to wear a white suit.’
She could feel Silas starting to shake with laughter.
‘Silas, it isn’t funny. He’s bought a white poodle—and a diamond-and turquoise-studded collar.’
‘For whom?’
‘The poodle, of course. At least, I assume it’s for the poodle. I haven’t told you the worst yet, though.’
‘Could it be any worse?’
‘Yes. He keeps on talking about Liberace—Silas, stop laughing. Silas!’ Julia protested breathlessly as he suddenly stopped walking and pulled her towards him.
‘We’re almost back at the villa,’ she told him huskily, as his hands moulded her against his body.
‘I can’t wait that long.’
His skin smelled of warm night air and that sexy indefinable smell that was just him, and his lips were cool and slightly salty as they teased and cajoled hers.
Julia looped her arms around his neck and traced the shape of his mouth with the tip of her tongue, glorying in the now familiar starburst of erotic delight fizzing eagerly inside her. It wouldn’t always be like this between them, of course; one day this fierce, intoxicating passion would become a warm and familiar comforting glow rather than something that still filled her with half-shocked delight. One day. A long, long time from now, when they were old...
Growing old with Silas. The rest of their lives together. How very lucky she was—and how very, very happy. She held him tighter, kissing him passionately, making a small soft sound of pleasure deep in her throat as she felt him start to unfasten her cut-offs and then slide his hand inside the opening.
‘You’re so wet...’
‘Mmm, I know... Uhh. Ohh. Mmm, Silas...’ Her body was already moving rhythmically against his caressing fingers, her own hand closing round him whilst she shuddered in pleasurable anticipation. He fitted her so well. Filled her so well, making her feel each time that she almost might not be able to take the pleasure of the depth and intensity of his thrusts, and yet at the same time miraculously somehow making her feel that she wanted to stretch, to have more and more of him.
‘Silas, I’m going to come,’ she warned him.
‘No. Not yet. I want to watch you when you do...’
He removed his fingers, slowly and gently, and then kissed her tenderly, keeping her close to his side as they walked the last few yards to their villa.
CHAPTER NINE
JULIA lay in bed next to Silas, dreamily watching the early-morning sunshine stroking golden warmth onto his bare skin. Silas had the most perfect male body she had ever seen, and just looking at it—at him—filled her with such a deep well of wonder and happiness. She had never imagined that she would know this level of joy and fulfilment, or feel that her future stretched out in front of her in a rose-coloured pathway sparkling with gold dust. She was just so happy—and all because of Silas.
‘I thought you said you wanted to be up early today, with it being Dorland’s big day.’
‘Mmm, I did,’ she agreed reluctantly.
She was going to be tied up for most of the day, and they had agreed that Silas would leave her to do what she had to do whilst he got on with some work of his own. But not yet. Definitely not yet. She snuggled closer to Silas, drawing sexy shapes on his bare shoulder with the tip of her tongue and then, nibbling his earlobe and whispering in his ear.
‘You’ve got to guess what I’m drawing, and if you’re wrong you have to pay a forfeit.’
‘Which is?’
‘Either massage my feet or shag me.’
‘And if I get it right and win?’
‘You get to massage my feet and shag me,’ Julia told him generously, before adding dreamily, ‘I’m keeping a count of how many orgasms I’ve had with you.’
‘What for? Comparison or posterity?’
Julia giggled. ‘Well, it isn’t for comparison—no one could compare with you, Silas. Do you think I should count all those little mini multiple “o”s I had last night as one or individually?’
As Silas moved, the bedclothes slipped down past his waist, revealing the thick hard jut of his morning erection for her adoring and admiring app
roval.
‘How close are you to double figures?’ he asked lazily.
‘Mmm...with the multiples I’m over it, and without I’m just over halfway to triple. Oh...that is so nice...’ She exhaled heavily as his tongue caressed the nipple of the bare breast closest to his mouth whilst his fingers worked sensually on the other.
Drawing her with him, Silas lay flat against the bed, so that she was arched over him on her hands and knees.
Watching her excitement as she responded to the sure guidance of his hands, Silas was sharply aware of how unique she was. He had had sex, and he had had good sex, but he had never had sex with a woman who responded to him with the openness and enjoyment, the complete naturalness and the sheer happiness manifested by Julia. She showed him in so many different ways that having sex with him gave her pleasure and delight and made her feel good, and as a consequence of that she made him feel good. In fact she made him feel one hell of a lot more than merely good.
Her breathless ‘Oh, Silas, look!’ had him pushing aside his thoughts to obediently look down his own body to where she was straddling him, and slowly and joyously taking him into her inch by inch.
‘Mmm, doesn’t that look good? It feels good too... You are just so big!’ she cooed delightedly.
Foolish, flattering words. But the insane thing was that Julia quite plainly actually meant them.
She eased down on him a little more, using her muscles to gently squeeze and then stroke his erection in a movement that made him close his eyes and fight for self-control.
But Julia obviously had other ideas, and he could hear her laughing softly as she took him deeper and held him harder, and his control exploded in the red heat of his need to drive into her over and over again, his hands gripping her hips as she moaned and writhed above him.
* * *
Outwardly she might look businesslike and in control but inside she was just a delicious boneless mass of sexually satisfied woman. Very sexually satisfied woman, Julia congratulated herself, as she listened to a very Notting Hill type who obviously fancied himself describing to her the birthday party he had attended in Venice earlier in the year.
‘And we were all taken to the party on these fantastic gondolas along the canals. Everyone was in costume. It was terribly Thirties and decadent. I’ve heard that an American TV network is filming Dorland’s party for one of those fly-on-the-wall docudrama things. Is it true?’
‘I really don’t know, Charles. You’ll have to ask Dorland,’ Julia answered truthfully.
‘And which famous people are going to be here?’
‘I haven’t seen the guest list,’ Julia replied. Which wasn’t true.
‘Julia—darling!’
Charles was shouldered aside by a trio of frighteningly stiff-faced women whom Julia vaguely recognised from school—not fellow pupils but their mothers. One of them, or so it was whispered behind closed doors, had not—as she liked to claim—been in her youth a high-priced model, but rather a high-priced whore.
‘So clever of you to bag Silas.’ Cold sharp gazes swept her from head to toe.
These women were part of the new social order—fifty-something divorcees, prepared to fight dirty in order to look more like thirty. While their ex-husbands used their money to replace them with younger models, these women used their divorce settlements to try and turn back time. And the better-informed ones sometimes actually managed it, Julia knew, thinking of at least half a dozen high-profile society hostesses who genuinely looked as though they had been able to turn the figure five into a three.
Unfortunately for them, though, these three were not among that half-dozen.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Julia agreed, flashing them a very happy smile.
‘All that money, and a title—and best of all, he’s wonderful in bed.’
Scarlet and green was never a good colour combination on aging faces, Julia decided smugly, and she left them with their red faces and jealous eyes to go and see how things were progressing with the decorating of the large marquee which had been put up for the occasion.
All the invitations had specified that Dorland’s guests were to wear either their own most ‘papped’ (papparazzied) outfit, or a copy of one worn by someone else. And Julia had privately predicted that at least half the female guests under thirty-five (and that meant all the female guests, since none of them was likely to admit to being older) would be wearing a copy of the designer Julien Macdonald’s itsy-bitsy sparkly dress, as worn by a certain top international star when she upstaged the bride at a celebrity wedding. With this in mind, Julia had suggested to Dorland that they keep the interior of the marquee quietly elegant and in colours that would act as a foil to the celebrated dress.
Dorland had resisted her advice at first, having fallen in love with the idea of mimicking a certain branded and banded couple’s wedding, with gold throne-like chairs studded with fake jewels instead of the simple, plain cream-covered dining chairs Julia had suggested, decorated with glittery grey and black and white ribbon tied into bows.
When Julia reached the tented anteroom of the main marquee, the construction people were just finishing setting up the champagne fountain Dorland had fallen in love with, and Dorland himself was busy giggling with a bevy of ultra-thin leggy blondes, who all seemed to be clutching small hairy dogs.
The combination of shrill yaps—from both pets and owners—was positively eardrum assaulting, Julia decided as she hurried out again—only to come to an abrupt halt as she saw Nick standing blocking her path.
‘I hear you really ballsed up in Positano,’ he told her unkindly.
Julia didn’t like being bullied, and she lifted her chin and told him sharply, ‘Someone certainly did.’
She thought for a minute that Nick was going to challenge her to explain what she meant, but instead he looked at her left hand and said mockingly, ‘He’s still not given you a ring, then?’
‘Actually, he has,’ Julia semi-fibbed. After all, Silas had told her that he wanted her to wear the Monckford Diamond.
‘I must say you’ve surprised me, Jules,’ Nick drawled nastily. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’ve got what it takes to hook a man like Silas. Has he told you about Aimee DeTroite?’
‘Whatever Aimee may have been to Silas, that is now in the past,’ she told him lightly.
‘You mean Silas has told you she’s in the past. So far as she’s concerned she is still very much in his present and his future—but of course he won’t have told you that.’
What had she ever seen in Nick? He was a loathsome, vile, repellent toad, and she hated him for what he was doing to Lucy.
‘No, he hasn’t,’ she agreed coolly. ‘But he has told me about you.’
‘What does that mean?’ Nick demanded.
‘You know what it means. It means that Silas has checked up on you and the business. How could you do this to Lucy, Nick?’
‘What have you said to her?’
‘Nothing—yet. But I—’
‘Jules—there you are. Have you got a moment?’
‘Of course, Dorland.’ Julia smiled, walking away from Nick to go and see what Dorland wanted.
* * *
Had Nick just been trying to upset her when he had told her about Aimee? Or did the other woman genuinely have grounds for claiming that she was involved in an on-going relationship with Silas? An affair with Silas now, in fact, since Silas was married to her.
Julia could feel her heart thumping painfully. She felt sick and dizzy from the mixture of anxiety and confusion and adrenalin hurtling through her veins. She was determined to hang on to her belief that whatever had happened before her in Silas’s private life was his alone to know about, if that was what he wished. Aimee was certainly not the type Julia would have thought would appeal to Silas. But Silas had dated her. And Silas had appear
ed in one of those stolen videos. She had not seen the video, but she had read the gossip when the story had first broken earlier in the year.
Nick was a troublemaker, she warned herself, and Silas was entitled to have a past. A past, yes. But right now she needed to know that not only was she his present and his future, but also that she was going to be his only present and future! And she needed to know it because she was wildly, passionately and totally in love with him.
Because he was the best shag she had ever had?
How shallow was that? Loving someone was about more than a ten-second orgasm, surely? About more than even double figures of them. Loving someone involved things like respect, and wanting to share the rest of your life with them, in sickness and in health. It meant that being with them added an extra dimension to your life. It meant that they were the light that filled your life, the extra special someone without whom your life felt empty and for whom your heart ached.
And that was exactly how she felt about Silas.
When she eventually got back to their villa, Silas was waiting for her.
‘Sorry I’ve been so long. Dorland was waffling on for ever about Jon Belton. I think he might have a crush on him. Oh, and Silas, guess what? Nick’s here.’
‘Blayne? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Dorland interrupted us before I could ask him. I can’t understand now why I didn’t realise how loathsome he is when I first met him. I told him we know what’s going on, and how much I hate him for what he’s doing to Lucy.’
‘I thought we’d agreed that nothing was going to be said about that until it could be proved?’
‘Well, yes. I know you did say that. But he made me so very angry, and it just sort of slipped out.’
‘What do you mean, he made you angry?’
‘Oh, he said that he couldn’t understand why you wanted me, and he asked me if I’d asked you about your relationship with Aimee DeTroite.’ Julia looked at him, but Silas had turned away from her.
His body language positively bristled with ‘keep off the past’ signs that sent a shiver of female anxiety icing down her spine. As a woman she could think of only one reason why he was making it plain he didn’t want to talk about Aimee, and that was because he still had feelings for her. No woman ever minded about talking about a burned-out love affair, especially not when doing so might help to underline her besotted adoration for her current love interest, Julia reasoned, so it must be the same for men.