Christmas with Her Bodyguard

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘I wanted to.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They stood again, silent and motionless. The tension cranking up a notch. Something inched down her spine and, if she hadn’t known better, Rae might have wondered if the thermostats hadn’t been set a touch too high. It was paradoxical, then, that she shivered.

  She might have known the ever astute Myles wouldn’t miss it.

  ‘Cold?’

  He hitched one eyebrow. As though he knew it was pure molten heat burning though her. She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Liar,’ he whispered.

  The wry smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, snagging her gaze, pinning it, and doing things to her insides that he had no business doing. Her stomach couldn’t have been more fluttery if it had turned into the lepidoterarium where last year’s fundraiser had been held. But infinitely worse than that was the way a fire was roaring deep inside her, much, much lower down. The smouldering embers making heat, and desire, and need pool between her legs.

  What was the matter with her that she was so incredibly attracted to this man? Even after all these years. He was like an insect that had crawled under her skin and was itching her from the inside out. It made no sense.

  She would be wise to remember that Myles had never said that he believed her explanations as to what had happened with Justin, just that it was difficult to change his perceptions. And the truth was that he’d never even tried to explain his own actions that night he’d rejected her all those years ago. Yet she still felt as if she weren’t herself. That she hadn’t found herself. Worse, there was no denying the electricity that sparked and arced between her and Myles.

  So many years later and she was pretty much in the same position she’d been in all those years ago.

  ‘You know my sisters will give me the third degree next time I see them?’ She swallowed hard, trying to loosen her dry tongue. To find something—anything—to say to break the silence. ‘They’ll want to know exactly how I came to be in contact with you again. And how you came to escort me to that ball.’

  ‘I can’t say I give a damn what that lot want to know.’

  He took a step towards her, his voice unbelievably husky. Sexy.

  She should back away. The idea of something happening between them was insane. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to move a muscle. All she could think about was how much she longed to tell him the truth. But that was madness. The whole world had already decided what they knew about her to be true. Whatever she said, Myles wasn’t going to believe her.

  And did it even matter? In a few days she’d be gone. Thousands of miles away on the month-long posting that she’d told him about earlier that evening.

  By the time she returned, Rafe would have resolved the issue of the death threats and life would be back to normal. No more bodyguard. No more Myles.

  The last thing she needed to do was complicate it now.

  He took another step towards her.

  ‘I’m not who you think I am, you know,’ she choked out in panic.

  She hated that he pulled a face. She was suddenly so desperate for him to know the truth. As if, if she could convince him that she wasn’t the girl the media had set her up to be—had never been that girl, not really, not intentionally—then maybe there was hope she could one day convince the rest of the world.

  ‘Stop, Rae. You were better off when you didn’t play that game.’

  He was so close now she could almost feel the heat bouncing off his body.

  ‘It isn’t a game,’ she managed shakily.

  ‘I’ve seen enough about you over the years to know it’s always a game with you lot.’ The words were ground out almost as though he was acting against his own will.

  And he still didn’t step away. He didn’t break eye contact.

  ‘Myles—’

  ‘Stop talking,’ he bit out.

  There was no reason at all for her to obey. So why did she?

  And then he’d closed the gap completely and they were standing there, in front of each other, and she had no idea what to do next.

  Myles, by contrast, suffered no such doubts.

  He reached over, thrusting his fingers into her hair and hauling her to him, to his mouth. Then he kissed her.

  And, oh, how he kissed her.

  He didn’t just press his mouth to hers, he claimed her, invaded her, branded her with every slide of his tongue and every graze of his teeth.

  Her entire being exploded, like the most dazzling firework display on New Year’s Eve. She wasn’t sure when she’d lifted her hands but somehow they were on his shoulders, her fingers biting into the thick, corded muscles, revelling in Myles’ strength, his size.

  Like coming home.

  Briefly, images of that awful tape, and the way she’d been with the press those years immediately following the most humiliating year of her life, flooded her brain.

  She should tell Myles the truth, she thought weakly. Surely basic pride, self-respect, should mean she’d want him to know who she really was.

  But what if he didn’t like it?

  He’d claimed to despise the brash, indiscreet, classless girl she’d reinvented herself into those years immediately after the sex tape had come out. He’d told her that she epitomised everything he despised. He’d been only too quick to accept the media lies that this was the girl she still, albeit to a moderately lesser extent, was.

  Yet here he was. On the one hand telling her that he loathed her. On the other, kissing her as though he couldn’t get enough of her. Would never get enough of her.

  He certainly hadn’t kissed the quiet, innocent, pure Raevenne like this.

  Which made her wonder which girl he was really attracted to.

  And then there was the fear that she would tell him what had really happened, and he wouldn’t believe her. Sadness spiralled down inside her like the helicopter seed from a sycamore tree.

  As much as people were all too eager to accept her first, scandalous reinvention from innocent girl to man-eating, party-loving vamp, it had never suited their salacious appetites to see that only a few years later she’d reinvented herself again into a focussed, private, junior doctor.

  It was too deliciously scandalous to keep seeing her as the girl she’d been for those few brief, lost years. The girl who had made a sex tape with her bodyguard to boost her ailing family name, to bring in money, after their father’s death.

  And yet she put up with it. All the press’ lies and all the public’s feigned shock, because, frankly, she’d wasted enough years trying to win her father’s approval when he’d been alive. She’d be damned if she was going to waste more years trying to win over a public who thrived on the perceived drama.

  But if Myles did that...? If he refused to see past his prejudice and only saw her as that girl, she feared it would torment her far worse than anything else. Better not to try or know than to try only to be disappointed.

  Placing her hands on his chest, she braced herself. It was distracting, how little strength she suddenly seemed to have. How instead of pushing him away, her fists were curling around his lapels, and pulling him closer.

  Briefly, she wondered where all this was leading.

  Would it shock Myles to know that, even though she’d slept with Justin that night because she’d imagined herself to be in love, believed him to be her soul mate, she’d never once felt as alive as she had with Myles?

  Probably.

  Probably worse.

  Yet still she clung to Myles, his mouth crushing hers so exquisitely, and hers responding so completely. As though every part of her had been waiting for him to do it all night.

  As he kissed his way down her body, searing her skin with his mouth as he dropped kisses down her neck, across her breasts and nipples, which were so tight they ached, an
d over her belly, she closed her eyes and let the shivers of pleasure ripple through her body. He might as well have been worshipping every inch of her, and as she stood there, practically naked and otherwise exposed, she realised that he didn’t make her feel ashamed, or small, or cornered, the way Justin had.

  On the contrary, Myles made her feel powerful, desirable, all woman. It was a heady experience. She’d never ached for anyone the way she ached for Myles.

  If only she knew how to act on it. How to show him.

  * * *

  He was kissing her to prove a point, Myles told himself fiercely. A point to himself. To her. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he understood that he wasn’t kissing her because he hadn’t been able to bear another second without doing so.

  He wasn’t kissing her because his entire body had ached for him to do so ever since they’d walked into that ballroom.

  No. It was ever since she’d walked into Rafe’s offices back in the UK last week.

  He couldn’t acknowledge that the truth was altogether less complicated and more primal. He mustn’t. Because he didn’t want to give himself any reason to stop.

  ‘Myles...’ She murmured the objection against his lips even as her arms tightened around his body.

  A better man would have listened to what she wasn’t able to say. A better man would have stopped. A better man would have walked away.

  Up until tonight, Myles would have imagined himself to be that man. But right here, right now, he couldn’t tear himself away from the kiss. More to the point, he didn’t want to,

  ‘Tell me to stop,’ he ordered, his lips barely leaving hers. ‘Tell me, and I will.’

  But it was a safe assurance, because they both knew she couldn’t do it. They both knew that she was as consumed by the kiss as he was. As powerless to put an end to it.

  Myles’ skin prickled. What was it about this woman that allowed her to get under his skin the way she did? She was the epitome of everything he despised. Or at least, she had been. The woman he’d been watching these last few days was so different from the caricature he’d thought he’d known. And he certainly hadn’t allowed for the inconvenient chemistry that arced undeniably between them.

  The chemistry that meant that he was now standing—and he had no idea when or how this had happened—right in front of her with his hands gripping her upper arms, his face dangerously close to hers. A delicate, faintly floral scent filled his nostrils, making his pulse race even faster.

  ‘What...are you doing?’

  Her voice was altogether too hoarse, too raw, too...everything, but she didn’t pull away. He wondered if she could. Was she as helplessly trapped in her body as he was in his, right now? He could taste her on his lips the way he had back in that ballroom. God, but he wanted to taste her again. His body tightened painfully. His head pounded.

  He pulled her closer. She didn’t exactly resist.

  ‘Myles...’ It was little more than a breathless whisper.

  ‘Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you haven’t been looking at me like this, all night.’

  It might sound like a command but it felt like a plea. As though, for the first time in his entire life, Myles didn’t feel in control of himself, and knew that he wasn’t going to be able to walk away from her this time.

  ‘I...’ She faltered, her gaze flicking from his eyes to his mouth and back again.

  Her tongue darted out to wet her mouth and the last of his resolve began to crumble. Desperate need gripped him.

  Without warning, Rae crested up onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his, the grudging mutter vibrating on his mouth.

  ‘You can pretend all you like, but you want me just as badly.’

  And everything else tumbled. Need and desire ripped through him. As lethal an ambush as any he’d known out of the battlefield, almost dropping him where he stood.

  He hauled her to him, revelling in the way every inch of her delicious body moulded itself to every inch of his, her hands reaching up to wind around his neck, her head angling to allow him better access.

  He tasted her, plundered her mouth, losing himself in the maelstrom of desire that had been swirling inside him from the first moment they’d met again in the Rawlstone Group’s HQ, however much he’d tried to deny it.

  Slowly, carefully, he ran his hands down her body, over the rough, metallic beads of her slinky, sexy dress, until he reached the high slit on her thigh. He should take it slower, take his time, but he couldn’t. He was driven by the primal need to divest her of her clothing and bury himself inside her, so deep, so tight, that neither of them would know where one ended and the other began.

  So, instead, he slid his hand inside, easing the dress enough that when he lifted her up, she could wrap her legs around his waist, her perfect heat pressed against the very hardest part of himself. And then he released the clasps that kept the halter neck in place, letting them drop, and it felt as though the very air were sucked from his lungs as he took in the soft swell of gloriously creamy skin; the deliciously hard, brown buds that strained as if in a greeting meant only for him.

  Briefly he recalled the images he’d seen of her, a lot more naked than this, a lot more compromised than this. With any other woman it would have been enough to stop him. To put him off. It should concern him more that it didn’t. But Rae was such a different woman from the girl in that sex tape. So far removed from the girl who’d been linked to more men than he’d had ration-packed army meals.

  He desired her, ached for her, and there wasn’t a damned thing he seemed to be able to do about it. He looked into her eyes, all the longing and the need he felt reflected back at him. He shifted and her breath hitched, making him feel more powerful than he’d ever felt. So, for once in his life, Myles shut his brain off, stopped trying to tell himself that he should know better, and instead let his body do the thinking.

  Why not? What harm could it do?

  He backed them against a wall, her legs still locked around him and one hand still cradling her pert backside, whilst the other explored. His palm grazed her skin as his thumb raked over one taut nipple. She gasped, her eyes slightly hooded, her cheeks slightly pink, but not breaking her gaze from his. He tried it again, and this time she rocked her body so that it pressed harder against him, sending need pulsing all through him.

  He cupped her tighter, letting his mouth take over from where his hand had been. His tongue swirling gently around the nipple, revelling in the way her breathing shallowed, then sucking hard until she cried out with pleasure.

  * * *

  Rae opened her mouth to speak only to find she couldn’t say a word. He was cupping her, her sex chafing on the lacy material that he hadn’t even bothered to remove. She gasped and rocked against him, his palm raking over her wet heat. His eyes not leaving hers, he twisted his hand, and suddenly he was on the other side of the lace, tracing her swollen folds with almost lazy ease. She shivered and moved against him, desperate to intensify the pleasure, but he shifted his hand away, his mouth curling into a teasing smile.

  ‘I’ll be the one setting the pace, I think, Raevenne, not you.’

  And she groaned and gasped, her fingers biting into his solid shoulders, trying to obey him, yearning for him to begin again. The way he was taking his time was like some exquisite torture. It hadn’t been like this her one time before. As if she could go on for ever, yet simultaneously couldn’t wait another second.

  As if he could read her mind, Myles drew his finger around her again, but this time, as he closed the pattern, he moved his finger straight across her core, stroking the most sensitive bud. Fast then slow, then fast again, repeating it, deepening it, until she felt dizzy, almost mindless. This time, when she surged against his hand, he didn’t stop. Instead he matched her, pulled her along with him, her body clenching and fizzing and burning with this fire he was building, as his mouth now
paid homage to her neck, his teeth nipping at her earlobes, pressing kisses into the sensitive hollow behind her ear.

  Without warning, he moved his hand away, and it took Rae every ounce of strength to lift her head.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she gasped, not realising she’d uttered the words until Myles answered her. His voice was thick with desire, his thumb pressed to his lips.

  ‘I have no intention of stopping.’

  ‘Please...’

  ‘I have no intention of this night ending any time soon.’

  Suddenly his hand was back, his cold thumb pad taking up where his fingers had left off, the pace every bit as powerful, as intense as before. The sensations were cresting now, threatening to crash down over her, like nothing she’d ever known before. She was gripping his shoulders tighter, barely recognising the sounds escaping her as she began to buck against his hand. And as everything began to explode in her head, throughout her body, he slid his finger inside her, then another, his thumb maintaining the deliciously punishing pace. Rae shattered.

  She was only half aware of burying her head in his shoulder to keep from crying out his name so loudly that anyone outside her room might hear. And still Myles didn’t stop. Without warning, he twisted his wrist and the last of the explosions sounded in her head, and then she was soaring and tumbling, and there was silence. Pure, blissful silence.

  She finally came back to herself to find him watching her. The unguarded look in his eyes pierced straight through her, making her heart do strange looping things in her chest.

  You’re falling for him, you little idiot.

  The voice sounded remarkably like the sharp, bitter mocking of any one of her sisters.

  You’re a fool if you think this is anything more than just sex to him.

  She blanched, hating it, and tried to thrust it aside. But not quickly enough, it seemed, and before she could think twice she was bracing against him, pulling away.

  ‘Rae.’ The warning was unmistakeable, but she pretended she couldn’t hear it.

  She couldn’t afford to hear it.