A Very Gothic Christmas Page 17

  “Tell me I didn’t hurt you, Jess,” he asked. He lifted himself up to his elbows, his hands framing her face.

  “Dillon! I was practically yelling your name shamelessly for the entire household to hear.” She smiled as he leaned down to kiss her. The touch of his mouth sent a series of shocks through her body so that she once more rippled with pleasure. “I think I’m hypersensitive to you,” she admitted.

  His eyebrow shot up. “That appeals to me on a purely primitive level,” he said as he buried his face in the valley between her breasts. “I love how you smell, especially now after we’ve made love.” His mouth nuzzled her skin, his tongue teasing along her ribs. He allowed his sated body to slide away from hers, but his hand slipped along the path of her belly to rest in her triangle of curls. “I want to just explore every inch of you for the rest of the night. I want to know you, what brings you pleasure, what gets you hot fast and what takes a little longer. Mostly, I just want to be with you.” His silky hair played over her aching breasts as he lifted his head high enough to look at her. “Do you mind?”

  There was a curious vulnerability about him. Jessica stretched languidly beneath him, offering up her body to him. “I want to be with you, too.”

  She lay listening to the rain on the roof while his hands skimmed her body, framed every curve, touched every inch of her with tenderness. She felt as if she were drifting in a sea of pure pleasure. He made love to her a second time, a slow, leisurely joining that stole her heart along with her breath.

  Jessica realized she must have fallen asleep a while ago when she woke to feel Dillon’s hands gliding over her once again. She lay in the dark, smiling as he brought her body to life. His hands and mouth were skillful, teasing, tempting. He shifted to pull her closer to him, his knowledge of her body growing with every exploration.

  His tongue was busy at her nipple, his mouth hot with passion and Jessica closed her eyes, willing to give herself up to the incredible sensation. Her hands in his hair, she tried to relax, tried to ignore the shiver of awareness moving down her spine. She felt eyes on them. Watching them. Watching Dillon suckling at her breast, his fingers delving deeply into her wet core. Her eyes flew open and she looked wildly around the room, trying to see into every shadow.

  Dillon felt her sudden resistance. “What is it, baby?” he asked, his mouth still busy between words. “Have I made you sore?”

  “Someone is outside the door, Dillon,” Jessica whispered against his ear, “listening to us.” It was difficult to think when his mouth was pulling so strongly at her breast, sending white-hot streaks of lightning dancing through her bloodstream. When he pushed two fingers deep and stroked her with such expertise.

  Dillon’s body was hard and hot and wanting hers. His tongue flicked over the tight bud of her nipple, did a long, slow lazy swirl. He lifted his head away from the lush pleasures of her body when she tugged at his hair. His blue eyes burned over her face hungrily. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I’m not kidding, Dillon,” Jessica insisted, “someone is listening to us, or watching us. I can feel them.” She stiffened, pushing at him, looking toward the glass balcony half expecting to see a hooded figure standing there.

  Sighing with regret, Dillon left the pleasures of her body and looked around for his jeans. She had already slipped into his robe, cinching it around her slender body. Her face was pale and her red-gold hair spilled around her like a waterfall of silk. He didn’t understand her. She was always a miracle of good sense, but when it came to certain things, she lost every bit of it, she was so positive that forces were conspiring to harm those she loved. He couldn’t really blame her for worrying. Dillon stalked to the door and jerked it open wide to show her no one was there.

  His heart nearly stopped when he came face-to-face with his bass player. They stood so close their noses were nearly touching.

  Don stared for a moment at Dillon’s exposed chest, then glanced past him to see Jessica huddled in Dillon’s robe. Dillon stepped instantly to block Don’s view of her. “What the hell are you doing, Don?” Dillon snapped, angrily.

  Don flushed, glanced past him to Jessica’s pale face, and half turned to leave. “Forget it, I didn’t realize you were busy. I saw the light and knew you were up.”

  Dillon swallowed his annoyance. Don never sought him out. It was a rare chance to clear the air between them, even if it was untimely. “No, don’t go, it must have been something important that brought you here this late.” He raked a hand through his thick black hair, tossed Jessica a pleading smile. She responded exactly the way he knew she would, nodding slightly and drawing his robe more closely around her. “Hell, it must be close to five in the morning.” He stepped back and gestured for Don to enter. “Whatever it is, let’s deal with it.” Don looked rumpled and Dillon smelled alcohol on his breath.

  Don took a deep breath, stepped inside. “I’m sorry Jessie.” His gaze found her, then slid away. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  She shrugged. It was far too late to hide anything that had been going on. The bed was rumpled, the pillows on the floor. Her hair was disheveled and she wore nothing under Dillon’s robe. “Would you like me to leave?” She asked it politely. Don seemed terribly nervous, his apprehension adding to her own discomfort. Her stomach rolled ominously, a wave of nausea swamping her for a moment.

  “I don’t know if I have the courage to say to Dillon what I need to say, let alone in front of anyone, but on the other hand, you’re always a calming influence.” He paced across the room several times while they waited.

  “Have you been drinking?” Dillon asked, curious. “I’ve never seen you drink, Don, not more than one beer.”

  “I thought it would give me courage.” Don gave him a half hearted humorless grin. “You need to call the police and have me arrested.” The words tumbled out fast, in a single rushed breath. The moment he said them, he looked for a place to collapse.

  Dillon led him to one of the two chairs positioned on either side of a small reading table. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  Jessica had already hurried to get a glass from the large master bathroom. “Here, Don, drink this.”

  He took the glass, gulped the water down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked up at Dillon. “I swear to God I thought you knew about Vivian and me. All this time I thought you were waiting for a chance to get rid of me and replace me with Paul. I kept waiting for it to happen. I tried so hard never to give you a reason.”

  “Before anything else, Don, I’m a musician. I love Paul. He’s my best friend. We’ve stood together through the best and worst of times, but he doesn’t have your talent. I wanted you in the band. From the first time I heard you play, I knew you were right. Paul doesn’t have your versatility. He helped start the band, and I had no intention of leaving him along the wayside, but once you signed on with us, you were as much a part of the band as I was.” Dillon shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry you thought differently, that I never told you how valuable you were to me.”

  “Great. I didn’t need to hear you say that.” Don heaved a sigh. “This isn’t easy, Dillon. I don’t deserve you to be civil to me.”

  “I’ll admit I was shocked and upset about you and Vivian,” Dillon said. He reached for Jessica, unable to help himself, needing to touch her. Needing her real and solid beside him. At once she was there, her small body fitting beneath his shoulder, her arm slipping around his waist. “It was a rotten thing to do, Don, but it hardly warrants calling the police.”

  “I tried to blackmail you.” Don didn’t look at either of them as he made the confession. He stared down at his hands, a lost expression on his face. “I saw you go into the forest that night. We all heard the yelling upstairs, and the pounding. We figured you caught Viv with one of her lovers. No one wanted to embarrass you so they all went to the studio to be out of the way, but I went to the kitchen for something to drink and I saw you go out. You had tears on your face and you were
so shaken, I followed you, thinking I could offer to help. But you were more distraught than anyone I’d ever seen before and I figured, since it involved Vivian, you wouldn’t want to talk to me. I walked around, undecided, and then just when I was going back, I saw you go in through the kitchen. Rita was in there and I heard you talking, telling her what happened. You were so angry, you were wrecking the place. I didn’t dare approach you or Rita. I saw you start up the stairs and I headed for the studio. Then I heard the shots.” As proof of his crime he pulled a plain sheet of paper from his pocket. Words cut from the headline of a newspaper were pasted on it. “This was one I was going to send you.”

  “Why didn’t you testify to that at the trial?” Dillon’s voice was very low, impossible to read. He snatched the paper from Don’s hand and crumpled it without glancing at it.

  “Because I was already on the basement staircase, looking out through the glass doors, and I saw you when the shots were fired. I knew you didn’t do it. You had gone back outside a second time and you were heading toward the forest.”

  “Yet you decided blackmail was a good alternative?”

  “I don’t know why. I don’t know why I did any of the things I’ve done since then,” Don admitted. “All I cared about was the band. I wanted it back. You sat up here in this house with Paul, no one else could get near you. You had all that talent just going to waste, a musical genius, and you locked yourself up with Paul as the warden. He never wanted me anywhere near the place. I had this stupid idea that if you had to pay out a lot of money, you’d have go back to work and we’d all be back on the ride.”

  “Why didn’t you just talk to me?” Dillon asked in the same quiet voice.

  “Who could talk to you?” Don demanded bitterly. “Your watchdog wouldn’t let anyone near you. You have him so well trained he practically has the Great Wall of China surrounding the island.” He held up his hand to prevent Dillon from speaking. “You don’t have to defend him, I know he’s protective and even why. I needed the band back and I felt hopeless so I sent you a stupid letter and followed it with a couple of others. Obviously you weren’t very worried because you didn’t respond.”

  “I didn’t give a damn,” Dillon admitted.

  “There’s no excuse for what I’ve done,” Don announced, “so I’m ready to go to jail. I’ll confess everything to the cops.”

  Dillon looked so helpless, Jessica put her arms around him. “Did you talk to my mother about this?” She couldn’t see Don sneaking around her mother’s car, fraying the brake lines. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore. If she felt so lost, with the ground shifting out from under her, how must Dillon feel?

  “Hell no, she would have boxed my ears,” Don said emphatically. “Why would I do a dumb thing like that?”

  “You’re drunker than you think you are, Don,” Dillon said, “go sleep it off. We’ll talk about this later.” He had absolutely no idea what he was going to say when they talked. He almost felt like laughing hysterically.

  Jessica pressed her hand to her stomach as Dillon closed the door. “I feel sick,” she announced before he could speak and raced for the bathroom.

  chapter

  12

  “COME ON, BRENDA, you have to come with us,” Tara wheedled. “It will be fun.”

  “Are you certain you’re feeling better? You were so sick this morning. I almost made Robert get Paul to bring in a helicopter to transport you to the hospital. And now you’re jumping around like nothing happened.”

  Jessica looked up alertly. Everyone had gathered in the kitchen, sleeping late as usual so that it was early evening. “Tara was sick this morning? Why didn’t someone come and get me?”

  “Both the children were sick this morning and I handled it just fine, thank you very much,” Brenda announced. “Some kind of stomach flu. You know, Jessie, you aren’t the only one with maternal instinct. I was a miracle of comfort to them. Not to mention I was being wonderfully helpful and discreet to give you and Dillon time to . . . er . . . work things out.”

  Trevor made a rude noise, somewhere between a raspberry and a choking cough. “A miracle of comfort? Brenda, you were hanging out the window gagging and calling for smelling salts. Robert didn’t know whether to run to you, Tara, or me. The poor guy was cleaning up the floor half the day.”

  “Robert, you are a true prince,” Jessica flashed him a grateful smile. “Thank you for cleaning up after them.”

  “Just remember it was my good sense to notice him,” Brenda took the credit.

  Don made a face. “I thought we were working today. I want to finish the recording and see what we have. Do we have to do this now?”

  “We’re staying up all night working,” Paul pointed out. “By the time we get up, most the day is gone and we lose the light we need hunting for the Christmas tree. I say we go now.”

  Don muttered softly beneath his breath, his gaze studiously avoiding Dillon’s.

  Jessica frowned, studying the twins. “You both had the stomach flu? I was feeling a bit queasy this morning myself. Did anyone else? Maybe we all ate something bad.”

  “Brian’s pancakes,” Brenda said instantly, “ghastly things designed to drive us all mad with monotony. Devoid of all nutrition and basically the worst meal on the face of the earth. And if you ask me, he’s trying to poison me.” She blew him a kiss, pure glee on her face. “The heinous plot won’t work, genius though it might be, because I have a cast-iron stomach.”

  Brian leapt up out of his chair, nearly knocking it over. “I make pancakes that are works of art, Brenda,” he snapped, as if goaded beyond endurance. “I don’t see you slaving away in the kitchen for all of us.”

  “And you won’t ever, darling—the very idea makes me shudder,” she said complacently. “Trivial things should be left to trivial people.”

  “The children are fighting again,” Jessica pointed out with a soft sigh, leaning into the comfort of Dillon’s body. “And as usual, it isn’t the twins.”

  “Tara, are you certain you’re feeling well enough to go traipsing around in the woods? It’s cold out and the wind is really blowing. There’s another storm on the way. If you’d rather curl up here where it’s warm, we’ll go look and bring you back a tree,” Dillon offered. He wrapped his arms around Jessica, uncaring that anyone saw them.

  For the first time in years, he felt at peace with himself. There was hope in his life, a reason for his existence. “Jess and Trevor can stay with you, if you’d like.”

  “No way,” Trevor objected. “I’m feeling fine. No one else can pick our tree. We know what we’re looking for, don’t we, Tara?”

  Tara nodded solemnly, wrapping her arm around her brother’s waist, her eyes on Jessica. All three smiled in perfect understanding. “We all go,” she announced. “We’ll know the right tree.”

  Dillon shrugged. “Sounds fine to me—let’s do it then. Anyone who would like to find the tree with us is welcome to come. We can get the tools out of the shed and meet you on the trail.” He tugged at Jessica, determined to take her with him. A few minutes alone in the shed was looking good. He hadn’t had two minutes to steal a kiss from her.

  “Whoa there,” Trevor held up his hand. “I’m not sure how safe it is to let our Jessica go to a shed with you, Dad. You have a certain reputation as a Casanova type.”

  Dillon’s eyebrow shot up. “And where would I get a rep like that?”

  “Well, for one thing, look at this house. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this place. You have weird carvings and things hanging off the eaves. What’s that all about? This place looks like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe novel. The men in those books were always up to no good with the ladies.” He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  “Weird carvings?” Dillon was horrified. “This house is a perfect example of early Gothic and Renaissance architecture combined. You, son, are a cretin. It’s a perfect house. Look at the carvings on the corners: winged gargoyles scaling the south side, lions clawing
their way up the east side. The detail is fantastic. And every true Gothic and Renaissance man has his secret passageways and moving walls. Where’s the fun in a stately mansion? Everyone has one.”

  “Dad,” Tara stated firmly, “it’s creepy. Have you ever looked at it at night from the outside? It looks haunted and it looks as if it’s staring at you. You’re a little bit out there, even if you are my father.”

  “Treacherous children,” Dillon said. “You’ve been spending far too much time with your aunt. She shares your opinion of my home.”

  Brenda rolled her eyes heavenward. “Dillon you have things crawling up your house and watching every move one makes outside. I shudder every time I’m in the garden or walking through the grounds. I look up and there something is, staring at me.”

  “Technically,” Brian interrupted, “they watch over the house and the people in it. If you’re afraid, it’s probably because you have good reason to be.” He hitched closer. “Like maybe you’re harboring ill will toward those inside.”

  Jessica crumbled a napkin and pitched it at Brian. “Back off, drummer boy, since Brenda was such a miracle of comfort to my babies, I can’t very well let you spout your nonsense. I’ve always loved Gothic architecture, too. We used to look at all the books together and Dillon would bring home photos from Europe.” She winked at Trevor. “I would think those hidden passageways would intrigue you.”

  Dillon captured her hand and pulled her toward the double doors leading toward the courtyard. “Dress warm you two—we’ll meet you on the trail.”

  Jessica followed him out into the courtyard, ignoring Trevor’s taunting whistle. “I don’t like it that both of the kids were sick this morning, Dillon,” she said. “Yesterday, Tara saw someone watching them when the landslide occurred. She couldn’t tell who it was, he or she was wearing a long hooded cape. I saw the same person the night we arrived.”

  Dillon slowed his pace, pulling her closer to him so that she was beneath the protection of his shoulder. “What are you saying, Jess?” He was very careful to keep his tone without expression. “Do you think the landslide was rigged in some way? And the kids didn’t have the flu, that someone somehow poisoned them?”