Four Christmas Treats. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ the fierce contractions of her orgasm Tilly felt Silas’s final deep thrust as he joined her in the soaring ecstasy that was binding them both together and taking them to infinity.

      Silas moved away from the window and looked towards the bed. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. He hadn’t been able to do anything since they had made love except go over and over inside his head the now familiar journey that had led from his first meeting with Tilly to this. He felt as though his whole life had suddenly veered off course and gone out of his control. How was it possible for him to have changed so much so quickly? How was it possible for him to feel so differently?

      He made his way back to the bed. Not being within touching distance of Tilly made him feel as though a part of him was missing, that he was somehow incomplete.

      As he slid back the duvet he realised that she was awake.

      ‘You know what’s going on, don’t you?’

      ‘I think so, and it isn’t something I wanted to happen,’ Tilly answered, trying to make her voice sound light and careless but hearing it crack as easily as he’d cracked apart the protective casing she had put around her heart.

      ‘Falling in love wasn’t exactly on my agenda either,’ Silas told her dryly.

      ‘Perhaps if we try really hard we can stop it.’

      There was enough light from the moon for her to see the cynically amused look Silas was giving her. ‘Like we’ve already tried once tonight, you mean?’ he derided, causing Tilly to give a small shiver.

      ‘Silas, I don’t want to love you. I don’t want to love anyone. Loving someone means being hurt when they stop loving you.’

      ‘I won’t stop loving you, Tilly. I couldn’t.’ It was, Silas recognised, the truth.

      ‘This is crazy,’Tilly whispered, but she knew that her protests meant nothing and that her own emotions were overwhelming her.

      ‘Love is crazy. It’s well known that it’s a form of madness.’

      ‘Maybe it’s just the sex?’ she suggested. ‘I mean…’

      Silas shook his head.

      ‘No, it isn’t just the sex,’ he assured her. ‘You can trust me on that.’

      ‘There can’t be love without trust. And honesty,’Tilly whispered solemnly.

      This was all so new to her, and so very precious and vulnerable. Acknowledging her feelings felt like holding a new baby. Her heart did a slow high-dive. A baby. Silas’s baby.

      Trust and honesty. Silas reached for Tilly. He was going to have to tell her the truth about himself, and his reason for taking Joe’s place.

      But not tonight. Not now, when all he wanted to do was hold her and kiss her and feel the responsive silky heat of her body, taking him and holding him, while he showed her his love.

      Tilly glanced anxiously at Silas. He had hardly spoken to her as he drove them back to the castle, and whatever he was thinking his thoughts didn’t look as though they were happy ones.

      ‘Second thoughts?’ she asked him lightly.

      ‘About the wisdom of returning to the castle? Yes. About us? No,’ Silas answered her truthfully. ‘What about you?’

      ‘I rather think I’ve made it obvious how I feel.’ They had made love again before breakfast, and now her body ached heavily and pleasurably with an unfamiliar, satisfied lassitude. She touched the comfortable weight of the ring on her left hand and then coloured self-consciously when she saw the gleam in Silas’s eyes.

      ‘I wish we could go back to London and get to know one another properly, instead of having to go back to the castle,’Tilly admitted. ‘And I can’t help worrying about my mother. It’s obvious that Art’s family doesn’t want him to marry her.’

      ‘My guess is that if they don’t manage to break them up before they marry, they’ll make her life hell afterwards. To be honest, I’m surprised she can’t see that for herself.’

      ‘Ma only sees what she wants to see,’ Tilly told him. ‘She can be very naive like that. I just don’t want her to be hurt. When her last marriage broke up she was desperately unhappy. It was the first time she hadn’t been the one to end things. If Art decides not to go ahead with the wedding, I don’t know what it will do to her. Ma’s one of those women who doesn’t feel she’s a viable human being unless she’s got a man in her life.’ Tilly smiled ruefully. ‘That’s probably more than you want to know. I’m sorry. But this is the first time I’ve felt close enough to someone to be able to be talk honestly about how I feel without thinking I’m being disloyal.’

      ‘What about your father?’

      ‘Oh, I love Dad, of course. But he disapproves of Ma, and they don’t see eye to eye. I’d feel I was letting her down if I told him how much I worry about her, and why. They were so unsuited—but that’s the trouble about falling in love, isn’t it? You don’t always know until it’s too late that you aren’t compatible. And sometimes even when you are it isn’t enough.’

      ‘Sometimes a couple meet and are fortunate enough to recognise that what they share goes far beyond mere compatibility,’ Silas told her. ‘Like soul mates.’

      Tilly felt a fine thrill of the most intense emotion she had ever experienced run through her as he turned to look at her.

      It moved her beyond words that Silas should say such a thing to her, almost as though he already knew how vitally important it was to her that the love growing between them should be perfect in every way.

      And yet the closer they got to the castle the more she sensed that Silas seemed to be distancing himself from her, retreating to a place where he didn’t want her to follow him. His answers to her efforts to make conversation became terse and unencouraging, giving her the message that he preferred the privacy of his own silence to any attempt to create a more intimate mood between them.

      She told herself that she was being over-sensitive, and that what to her felt like a distancing tactic was probably nothing more than a desire to concentrate on his driving.

      The closer they got to the castle the more Silas recognised the dual agenda he would now be operating under. From the outset he had been totally clear to himself about his purpose in stepping into Joe’s shoes. He had told himself that deceiving a young woman he didn’t know, while regrettable, would be justified by the exposure that would be the end result of his research. But he hadn’t anticipated then that the impossible would happen and he would fall in love with Tilly.

      Now that he had, his deceit had taken on a much more personal turn. He was now in effect lying by default to the woman he loved. He was lying to her about his real identity, the real nature of his work, the fact that he was using her as a cover to screen his own agenda.

      For each and every one of those lies he had an explanation he believed she would understand and accept—after all, he had not set out with the deliberate intention of deceiving her. But the highly emotionally charged atmosphere of the castle, where they would be surrounded by Art and his family, was not, in Silas’s opinion, the best place for him to admit totally what he had done, СКАЧАТЬ