Jessica Hart - Four Christmas Treats

‘I do not hire men to have sex with me. I don’t need to.’Well, it was true, wasn’t it? ‘I’ve already made it perfectly clear to you why I need an escort, and if you thought I was lying or had some ulterior motive then surely it was up to you to refuse the commission. You don’t strike me as the kind of man who would allow himself to be put in a situation you don’t want,’ she told him shrewdly.

Her reaction wasn’t what Silas had been expecting. He had assumed that she would use his accusation as an excuse to lay her cards on the table. At which point he had intended to make it plain that, while he was prepared to act as her fiancé in public, making use of the intimacy provided by their shared accommodation was most definitely not on the agenda.

The nature of his profession meant that Silas was immediately and instinctively suspicious of everyone’s motives. As far as he was concerned, everyone had something to hide, something they were prepared to sell, and something they were prepared to buy. He himself wanted to hide the fact that he was using his position as a fake fiancé to get closer to Art, but he was only prepared to sell his time, not his body. He was also a man who hated being wrong-footed and forced to accept that he had made an error of judgement—especially by a woman he had no reason whatsoever to respect.

‘I thought your explanation owed more to imagination than truth,’ he told her uncompromisingly. ‘As far as I am concerned, and in view of what has transpired, I was right to question the validity of what you were telling me. Not, I must say, that I admire your taste in sexual boltholes,’ he added disparagingly. ‘Apart from anything else, it’s freezing. Are those radiators on?’ He walked over to one of them and put his hand against it.

‘Apparently Art’s daughters have messed up the delicate balance of radiator temperature and fair heating for all,’ Tilly told him tiredly. ‘Or at least I think that’s what my mother was trying to tell me.’

Somehow Tilly managed to answer his mundane question with an equally mundane answer, even though her heart was pumping so much blood through her veins she could actually feel the adrenaline surge. There was no way she was going to let his insults go unchallenged.

‘You don’t have to stay here, you know,’ she told him. ‘There’s nothing to stop you leaving if you want. I certainly won’t be trying.’ She tried to put as much withering scorn into her words as she could.

Silas gave her a derisory look. ‘We’ve only just arrived, and we’re supposed to be engaged. I can hardly walk out now.’

‘Why not?’ Tilly demanded, in a brittle voice that betrayed her tension. ‘Engaged couples do quarrel and break up. It happens all the time. In fact, I think it’s a very good idea.’

She could feel the comfort of her own relief at the thought of him leaving. He was having an effect on her she really did not like or want. It— he —had made her feel uncomfortable and on edge even before he had accused her of lying to him. There was no way she wanted to spend a week sharing a room with a man who thought she was gagging for sex with him and about to pounce on him at any minute. She might be being a tad old-fashioned, but the truth was that she much preferred the traditional scenario in which she was the one imagining that he might pounce on her . Not that she wanted him to do so, of course. Not for one minute.

‘In fact,’ she continued fiercely, ‘I think it would be an excellent idea if I went down right now to find my mother and tell her that the engagement is off.’

‘Wouldn’t that be somewhat counter-productive? I thought the whole idea of this was to help your mother.’ The conversation and Tilly’s behaviour were taking a direction Silas hadn’t expected, and one he did not want. Tilly was quite obviously working herself up into a mood of moral outrage and, worse, she was throwing out the kind of challenges he had no intention of taking up.

It wasn’t like him to misjudge a situation, and it irked him that he might have here. But Tilly was behaving in a way he considered out of character for the slot he had mentally fitted her into. He despised women who insisted on playing games, and normally he wouldn’t have tolerated an assumed ‘injured innocent’ act, but right now he had too much at stake to risk her carrying out her threat. Much as he disliked having to admit it, he recognised that it night have been wiser for him to have played along with her pretence for a bit longer before letting her know that he had guessed what she was planning. He couldn’t allow this new situation to accelerate.

He might not mind walking out on Tilly, but if he did he would also be walking out on his chance to talk to Art. He had already sown the seeds for what he hoped would become more informative confidences once Art had let down his guard a bit more.

He walked over to the bed and eyed it assessingly. At least it was large enough for him to ensure that Tilly kept her distance from him.

He was standing next to her when they both heard Annabelle calling out from the other side of the door. ‘It’s only us, darlings!’

‘That’s my mother now,’ Tilly told him unnecessarily. ‘I’ve made up my mind. There’s no way I want to continue with this charade now, after the accusations you’ve just made. I’m going to tell her that we’ve had a row, that our engagement is over and that you’re leaving.’

She was making to remove the ring he had given her as she spoke, and Silas could tell that she meant what she was saying. The door was already opening. He thought quickly, and then acted with even greater speed.

It shocked Tilly how silently and lethally fast Silas moved, dropping down onto the bed next to her and imprisoning her in his arms as he rolled her torso down under his own and then covered her mouth with his.

Tilly tried to push him away, but he was holding her too tightly, one muscular leg thrown over her in what was surely one of the most intimate embraces a fully clad couple could perform—even if he was only adopting it to keep her pinned beneath the weight of his body. Pinned in such a way that she was shockingly aware of the physical differences between them—his hardness pressed to her softness, his body dominating and unyielding, while, to her outraged horror, her own was soft and accommodating, as though her flesh welcomed the possessive maleness of his.

While she tried to grapple with her own confused reactions he started to kiss her. Not gently, but fiercely and possessively, and with an added edge of almost dangerous urgency, as though there was nothing he wanted more than to have her mouth under his, as though at any moment now he would strip the clothes from their bodies so that her only covering would be him, and then…Somehow or other his free hand was cupping her breast, the hard pad of his thumb resting against her hard nipple.

This couldn’t be happening. It certainly should not be happening. Incredulously she struggled to resist him, distantly aware of her mother’s amused, ‘Whoops! Sorree…’ and then the immediate closing of the bedroom door.

He could let Tilly go now. Silas knew that. The danger was over. No way could she tell her mother now that they had quarrelled and that he was leaving after what she had just witnessed. But the bedroom was bitingly cold, and the rounded warmth of Tilly’s breast fitted into his hand as though it had been made for him. It surprised him to discover just how much he wanted to go on cupping it, and just how strong his urge was to caress the hard thrust of her nipple slowly and thoroughly, until she responded to his touch with her own urgency, arching up into his hands, wanting him to peel back the layers of her clothing until they could both see her arousal. He could certainly feel his own. He slid his other hand up into Tilly’s hair, lifting his mouth briefly from hers, watching as her eyes opened, her gaze soft and clouded. He traced the shape of her mouth with small, teasingly light kisses that mirrored the delicate touch of his fingertips on her breast.