Christmas at a Highland Castle

Chapter 31

Jess stopped at the threshold, took a deep breath and then padded across the music room floor. Her bare feet made no sound on the floorboards, or the thick rug behind the piano stool. The tea lights were all extinguished now, leaving the room in darkness except for the light from the moon. Sebastian startled as she reached him, but his fingers barely missed a beat in the piece he was playing, and when he didn’t stop, Jess rested a hand on his shoulder and slid onto the stool beside him, settling herself close enough to him that only a fool could misinterpret why she was there.

She watched his profile and his intense expression as he completed the piece, waited for his gaze to swing to hers as the final notes died away. Stayed completely still as his movement brought his face within inches of her own.

Jess wanted to say something sexy, or cool, or at least explain why she was there, in her pyjamas, throwing herself at him. Instead, she said, ‘I took it off.’

He huffed a laugh, his gaze raking its way up and down her.

‘You certainly did. I thought you looked amazing in that dress but, just for the record, I think I like this look even better.’

Jess couldn’t think of anything else to say. Instead, she pinched her bottom lip between her teeth and Sebastian did his best to hide a groan, a sound which twisted even harder at the knotted feeling in the base of Jess’s stomach.

She edged closer to him, close enough to feel his breath, to almost taste him. Close enough to see the individual eyelashes, dark and framing his pale blue eyes. Close enough to be able to smell his scent beneath the warm notes of his body spray.

‘I don’t know if this is the right thing to be doing, Sebastian, but …’

‘I’ve wanted to tell you for …’

Jess didn’t let him finish his sentence; being this close to him was suddenly nowhere near close enough and so she slid her fingers into his dark hair as she closed the gap and kissed him – gently at first, and then with a hunger Jess hadn’t expected to hit with such force. Playful became serious and their kiss deepened as they took control of one another’s lips, their tongues, their mouths.

His touch was soft and yet insistent as he wrapped his arms around her, and she still wasn’t close enough to him. Without losing contact with his lips, Jess swung herself around and straddled him on the piano stool. He moaned and tugged at the band holding her hair, allowing it to cascade down, covering both of their faces, screening them from the moon’s insistent light.

Sebastian trailed his fingers through her hair, pulling her against him, then feeling further down, searching out the waistband of her pyjamas, the hem of her jumper, the bareness of her skin between the two. She shivered at his touch and felt him smile. With her own hands, she guided his until they wrapped around her buttocks, encouraging him to pull her even closer.

The rhythm of her movements, slow and deliberate, the friction against the unmistakeable growing hardness of him beneath the single, thin layer of her pyjama trousers, was almost too much to bear. Heat and fizzing electricity added themselves to the deep twisting she’d felt for a while, and Jess was smiling now, too.

They disentangled their lips for long enough to be able to stare at one another, her breath shallow now and hitching as his fingers slid lower, touching her through the fabric of her pyjamas.

His breath was ragged, too, his gaze focused on hers. His fingers strayed away, frustrated by the barrier of the fabric, and settled again on her buttocks, pulling her close, encouraging her to press herself harder against him.

His gaze trailed away from hers, to her jumper. ‘Take it off,’ he said, this time his voice low and gruff and full of desire.

Jess crossed her arms, feeling for the hem and pulling off the jumper in one smooth movement. She dropped it to the floor, gasping as Sebastian gripped her firmly above her hips and lifted her, following her body closely with his own as he rested her on the keyboard and leant against her. The musical result was probably the oddest combination of chords and arpeggios ever created, as she leant her head back, steadying herself with her hands on the keyboard, notes sprinkling out at regular intervals as she wrapped her legs around him. Sebastian began to set up his own rhythm, pushing against her, pushing again and again as his tongue and lips searched their way across her neck and down to the V-neck of the pyjamas.

‘I want you so much,’ she said, the words little more than a whisper, but their effect was instant on Sebastian.

‘Here?’ he said, the gruff tone to his voice driving Jess closer to the edge as she nodded, and he lifted her again, swinging her past the piano stool and onto the thick rug behind it, lowering her until her back sank into the soft woollen pile. She reached for his shirt – he’d already discarded the bow-tie, his top button already loose – and between her fingers the rest of the buttons fled the buttonholes, the shirt discarded in seconds to give Jess her first real look at him. His torso was lean, swirls of dark hair covered his chest, and what he might lack in a six-pack he made up for with muscle tone in his arms like she’d never seen before. Not huge muscles but defined all the way up to and around his shoulders. They were sculptural, and she ran her fingers across every inch of them, and then every inch of the rest of his skin.

He didn’t attempt to remove any more clothing, his or hers, instead he lowered himself on top of her, encouraging her legs apart again.

‘Wider,’ he whispered, and Jess shivered as his fingers felt their way beneath the waistband of her pyjama trousers, felt their way to the very centre of her and set up a rhythm she knew her body would have no choice but to respond to, knew it was only a matter of time before he would have her begging him not to stop.

‘I want you ,’ she said again, trying to convey her meaning with the little oxygen she had spare for words.

He shook his head. ‘I haven’t got anything with me,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to need anything. Wasn’t expecting this.’

Condoms. He was talking about safety.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, reaching to unfasten his belt. ‘I’ve got that under control. I promise you.’

He shook his head, frustration biting at his expression until he said, ‘Wait. I think …’

Fumbling in a trouser pocket and extracting his wallet, he slid away from her long enough to rifle through its contents, credit cards and cash falling like confetti on the floor. A single foil wrap had him discarding the wallet, his focus on her again total.

With Sebastian reassured, their clothes discarded and their bodies explored by one another’s gazes and fingers and lips, Jess pushed Sebastian onto his back and climbed on top of him, the soft pile of the rug cushioning her knees.

‘My turn,’ she whispered, her body screaming out for her to hurry as she lowered herself onto him, and she began to move, began to push him deeper and deeper inside as he gripped her hips and aided her movements. The blood roared in her ears and their tempo quickened, the intensity of their movements gaining speed and their moans feeding directly into one another as they kissed again. If there had been a way for Jess to get even closer to Sebastian in those last few moments she would have taken it, as she did her best to control her movements to make the most of every last second before the crescendo overwhelmed her completely.

At last, as they lay entwined, breathless and covered in a sheen of sweat, even the moon blushed at its intrusion, deciding at last to grant them some privacy as its beams disappeared behind rapidly thickening clouds.

Jess burrowed against him, happy to stay exactly where she was until Sebastian’s stomach growled. She began to giggle, glancing up as he turned towards her.

‘I didn’t get any dinner, remember?’ he said, his own grin matching hers.

‘Shall we go and find something to eat?’ she suggested. ‘And I am talking about food, just to be clear.’

‘Yes, please.’

They scrabbled for clothes and headed for the kitchen. Jess swung open the fridge, revealing shelves groaning with partially prepped food for the following day. She pointed at boxes of snacks ready for the villagers.

‘We could always pinch a few of these,’ she said, slipping the lid from a box full of vol-au-vents and cheesy twists.

‘Let’s take them with us to bed. Are you bothered by crumbs in the sheets?’ he asked, lifting a cheesy twist and biting into it.

‘Whose sheets?’ she asked, stepping close enough for him to wrap an arm around her again, close enough for him to kiss her.

‘Mine. Yours. I don’t much care so long as you’re in them with me,’ Sebastian said.